Honeycomb

HANDBOUND
AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF

HONEYCOMB

TITLES OF THE SERIES:

POINTED ROOFS

BACKWATER

HONEYCOMB

THE TUNNEL (in preparation)

HONEYCOMB

BY

DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON

AUTHOR OF "POINTED ROOFS" AND "BACKWATER"

LONDON

DUCKWORTH fcf CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN

£$35*

First Published 1917

HONEYCOMB

CHAPTER I

WHEN Miriam got out of the train into
the darkness she knew that there were
woods all about her. The moist air was rich
with the smell of trees — wet bark and branches —
moss and lichen, damp dead leaves. She stood
on the dark platform snuffing the rich air. It
was the end of her journey. Anything that
might follow would be unreal compared to that
moment. Little bulbs of yellow light further
up the platform told her where she must turn
to find the things she must go to meet. " How
lovely the air is here." . . . The phrase re-
peated itself again and again, going with her up
the platform towards the group of lights. It
was all she could summon to meet the new situ-
ation. It satisfied her ; it made her happy. It

2 HONEYCOMB

was enough ; but no one would think it was
enough.

But the house was two miles off. She was
safe for the present. Throughout the journey
from London the two-mile drive from the
station had stood between her and the house.
The journey was a long solitary adventure ; end-
less ; shielded from thoughts of the new life
ahead and leaving the past winter in the Gunners-
bury villa far away ; vanquished, almost for-
gotten. She could only recall the hours she had
spent shivering apathetically over small fires ; a
moment when she had brought a flush of tears to
her mother's eyes by suddenly telling her she
was maddeningly unreasonable, and another
moment alone with her father when she had
stood in the middle of the hearth-rug with her
hands behind her and ordered him to abstain
from argument with her in the presence of her
mother — " because it gives her pain when I have
to show you that I am at least as right as you are "
— and he had stood cowed and silent. . . . Then
the moment of accepting the new post, the last
days of fear and isolation and helplessness in hard
winter weather and the setting off in the main
line train that had carried her away from every-

HONEYCOMB 3

thing — into the spring. Sitting in the shabbily
upholstered unexpectedly warm and comfortable
main line train she had seen through the mild
muggy air bare woods on the horizon, warm and
tawny, and on the near copses a ruddy purpling
bloom. Surprise had kept her thoughtless and
rapt. Spring — a sudden pang of tender green
seen in suburban roadways in April . . . one day
in the Easter holidays, bringing back the forgotten
summer and showing you the whole picture of
summer and autumn in one moment . . . but
evidently there was another spring, much more
real and wonderful that she had not known — not
a clear green thing, surprising and somehow dis-
appointing you, giving you one moment and then
rushing your thoughts on through vistas of
leafage, but tawny and purple gleamings through
soft mist, promising ... a vision of spring in
dim rich faint colours, with the noisy real rushing
spring still to come ... a thing you could look
at and forget ; go back into winter, and see again
and again, something to remember when the
green spring came, and to think of in the autumn
. . . spring ; coming ; perhaps spring was com-
ing all the year round. . . . She looked back,
wondering. This was not the first time that she

4 HONEYCOMB

had been in the country in March. Two years
ago, when she had first gone out into the world
it had been March . . . the night journey from
Barnes to London, and on down to Harwich, the
crossing in a snowstorm, the afternoon journey
across Holland — grey sky, flat bright green fields,
long rows of skeleton poplars. But it was dark
before they reached the wooded German country
— the spring must have been there, in the darkness.
And now coming to Newlands she had seen it.
The awful blind cold effort of coming to New-
lands had brought a new month of spring ;
there for always. . . . And this was the actual
breath of it ; here, going through her in the
darkness. . . . Someone was at her side, murmur-
ing her name, a footman. She moved with him
towards a near patch of light which they reached
without going through the station building, and
in a moment the door of a little brougham closed
upon her with a soft thud. She sat in the
softly lit interior, holding her umbrella and her
undelivered railway ticket in careful fingers.
The footman and a porter were hoisting her
Saratoga trunk. Their movements sounded
muffled and far-off. The brougham bowled
away through the darkness softly. The lights of

HONEYCOMB 5

the station flickered by and disappeared. The
brougham windows were black. No sound but
the faint rumble of the wheels along the smooth
road. Miriam relaxed and sat back, smiling.
For a moment she was conscious of nothing but
the soft-toned, softly lit interior, the softness at
her back, the v/armth under her, feet and her happy
smile ; then she felt a sudden strength ; the
smile coming straight up so unexpectedly from
some deep where it had been waiting, was new
and strong and exhilarating. It would not allow
itself to dimple ; it carried her forward, tiding
her over the passage into new experience and held
her back, at the same time ; it lifted her and held
her suspended over the new circumstances in
rapid contemplation. She pressed back more
steadily into the elastic softness and sat with
bent head, eagerly watching her thoughts . . .
this is me ; this is right ; I'm used to dainty
broughams ; I can take everything for granted.
. . . I must take everything absolutely for
granted. . . . The moments passed, carrying
her rapidly on. There was a life ahead that was
going to enrich and change her as she had been
enriched and changed by Hanover, but much
more swiftly and intimately. She was changed

6 HONEYCOMB

already. Poverty and discomfort had been shut
out of her life when the brougham door closed
upon her. For as long as she could endure and
achieve any sort of dealing with the new situa-
tion, they had gone, the worry and pain of them
could not touch her. Things that rose warm
and laughing and expanding within her now,
that had risen to the beauty and music and
happiness of Germany and been crushed because
she was the despised pupil teacher, that had dried
up and seemed to die in the English boarding
school, were going to be met and satisfied . . .
she looked down at the hands clasped on her
knees, the same hands and knees that had ached
with cold through long winter days in the base-
ment schoolroom . . . chilblains . . . the ever-
lasting unforgettable aching of her sore throat
. . . things that had made her face yellow and
stiff or flushed with fever . . . gone away for
ever. Her old self had gone, her governess self.
It had really gone weeks ago, got up and left her
in that moment when she had read Mrs. Corrie's
letter in Bennett's villa in the middle of a bleak
February afternoon. A voice had seemed to
come from the large handwriting scrawling
across the faint blue page under the thick neat

HONEYCOMB 7

small address in raised gilt. The same voice,
begging her to come for a few weeks and try
seemed to resound gently in the brougham.
She had not accepted the situation ; she had
accepted something in Mrs. Corrie's imagined
voice coming to her confidently from the big
wealthy house.

The brougham passed a lamp and swerved in
through a gate, bowling along over softly crunch-
ing gravel. She pressed reluctantly against the
cushioned back. The drive had been too short.
. . . Bennett's friends had given the Ccrries
wrong ideas about her. They wanted a governess.
She was not a governess. There were governesses
. . . the kind of person they wanted. It was a
mistake ; another mistake . . . the brougham
made a beautiful dull humming, going along a
tree-lined tunnel. . . . What did the Corries
want of her, arriving in their brougham ? What
did they expect her to do ? . . .

As the footman opened the door of the
brougham, a door far back in the dim porch was
flung back, letting out a flood of light, and the
swift figure of a parlourmaid who seized Miriams'

8 HONEYCOMB

Gladstone bag and the silver-mounted B anbury
Park umbrella and led the way across the porch
into the soft golden blaze. The Saratoga trunk
had gone away with the brougham, and in a mo-
ment the door was closed and Miriam was stand-
ing, frightened and alone, in a fire-lit, lamp-lit,
thickly carpeted enclosure within sound of a
thin chalky voice saying " Ello, ello." It
seemed to come from above her. " Ello — ello —
ello — ello," it said busily, hurrying about some-
where above as she gazed about the terrifying
hall. It was somehow like the box office of a
large theatre, only much better ; the lamplight,
there seemed to be several lamps shaded with low-
hanging old gold silk, and the rosy light from the
huge clear fire in a deep grate fell upon a
thick pale greeny yellow carpet, the little
settees with their huge cushions, and the strange-
looking pictures set low on dull gold walls. In
two directions the hall went dimly away towards
low archways screened by silently hanging bead
curtains. " Ello — ello — ello — ello," said the voice
coming quickly downstairs. Half raising her
eyes Miriam saw a pale turquoise blue silk dress,
long and slender with deep frills of black chiffon
round the short sleeves and a large frill draping

HONEYCOMB 9

the low-cut bodice, a head and face, sheeny
bronze and dead white, coming across the hall.

" Ow-de-do ; so glad you've come," said the
voice, and two thin fingers and a small thin
crushed handkerchief were pressed against her
half-raised hand.

" Are you famished? Deadly awful journey !
I'm glad you're tall. Wiggerson'll take up your
things. You must be starvin'. Don't change.
There's only me. Don't be long. I shall tell
them to put on the soup."

Gently propelled towards the staircase Miriam
went mechanically up the wide shallow stairs
towards the parlourmaid waiting at the top.
Behind her she heard the swift fuffle of Mrs.
Corrie's dress, the swish of a bead curtain and
the thin tuneless voice inaccurately humming in
some large near room, " Jack's the boy for work ;
Jack's the boy for play." She followed the maid
across the landing, walking swiftly, as Mrs.
Corrie had done — the same greeny carpet, but
white walls up here and again strange pictures
hung low, on a level with your eyes, strange soft
tones . . . crayons ? . . . pastels ? — what was
the word — she was going to live with them, she
would be able to look at them — and everything

io HONEYCOMB

up here, in the soft pink light. There were large
lamps with rose-pink shades. The maid held
back a pink silk curtain hanging across an alcove,
and Miriam went through to the open door of
her room. " Harris will bring up your trunk
later, miss — if you like to leave your keys with
me," said the maid behind her. " Oh yes,"
said Miriam carelessly, going on into the room.
" Oh, I don't know where they are. Oh, it
doesn't matter, I'll manage."

" Very good, miss," said Wiggerson politely,
and came forward to close the bedroom door.

Miriam flung off her outer things and faced
herself in the mirror in her plain black hopsack
dress with the apple green velveteen pipings
about the tight bodice and the square box
sleeves which filled the square mirror from side
to side as she stood. " This dress is a nightmare
in this room," she thought, puffing up her hair
under her fringe-net with a hat-pin. " Never
mind, I mustn't think about it," she added
hurriedly, disconcerted for a moment by the
frightened look in her eyes. The distant soft
flat silvery swell of a little gong sent her hurrying
to the mound of soft bath towel in the wide
pale blue wash-hand basin. She found a bulging

HONEYCOMB u

\

copper hot-water jug, brilliantly polished, with
a wicker-covered handle. The water hissed
gently into the wide shallow basin, sending up a
great cloud of comforting steam. Dare's soap
. . . extraordinary. People like this being taken
in by advertisements . . . awful stuff, full of
free soda, any transparent soap is bad for the
skin, must be, in the nature of things . . .
makes your skin feel tight. Perhaps they only-
use it for their hands. . . . Advertisement will
do anything, Pater said. . . . Perhaps in houses
like this — plonk, it certainly made a lovely hard
ring falling into the basin — where everything
was warm and clean and fragrant even Dare's
soap could not hurt you. The room behind her
seemed to encourage the idea. But surely it
couldn't be her room. It was a spare room.
They had put her into it for her month on trial.
Could it possibly be hers, just her room, if she
stayed . . . the strange, beautiful, beautiful long
wide hang of the faintly patterny faintly blue
curtains covering the whole of the window
space ; the firelight on them as she came into
the room with Wiggerson, the table with a blotter,
there had been a table by the door with a blotter,
as Wiggerson spoke. She looked round, there

12 HONEYCOMB

it was . . . the blue covered bed, the frilled
pillows, high silky-looking bed curtains with some
sort of little pattern on them, the huge clear fire,
the big wicker chair.

3

Miriam laughed over her strange hot wine-
clear wine-flavoured soup . . . two things about
soup besides taking it from the side of your spoon,
which everybody knows — you eat soup, and you
tilt your plate away, not towards you (chum
along, chum along and eat your nice hot soup).
. . . Her secure, shy, contented laugh was all
right as a response to Mrs. Corrie, sitting at the
head of the long table, a tall graceful bird, thin
broad shoulders, with the broad black frill
slipping from them, rather broad thin oval
white face, wiry auburn Princess of Wales fringe
coming down into a peak with hollow beaten-in
temples each side of it, auburn coils shining as
she moved her head and the chalky lisping voice
that said little things and laughed at them and
went on without waiting for answers. But to
herself the laugh meant much more than liking
Mrs. Corrie and holding her up and begging her
to go on. It meant the large dark room, the dark

HONEYCOMB 13

invisible picture, the big pieces of strange dark
furniture in gloomy corners, the huge screen
near the door where the parlourmaid came in
and out ; the table like an island under the dome
of the low-hanging rose-shaded lamp, the table-
centre thickly embroidered with beetles' wings,
the little dishes stuck about, sweets,, curiously
crusted brown almonds, sheeny grey-green olives ;
the misty beaded glass of the finger bowls —
Venetian glass from that shop in Regent Street —
the four various wine glasses at each right hand,
one on a high thin stem, curved and fluted like a
shallow tulip, filled with hock ; and floating in
the warmth amongst all these things the strange,
exciting, dry sweet fragrance coming from the
mass of mimosa, a forest of little powdery blos-
soms, little stiff grey — the arms of railway signals
at junctions — Japanese looking leaves — standing
as if it were growing, in a shallow bowl under
the rose-shaded lamp.

" Melie's coming on Friday."

The parlourmaid set before Miriam a small
shapely fish, with scales like mother-of-pearl and
pink fins, lying in a curl of paper. " Red mullet,"
she exclaimed to herself ; " how on earth do I
know that it's red mullet ? And those are olives,

I4 HONEYCOMB

of course." Mrs. Corrie was humming to herself
about Melie as the fork in her thin little fingers
plucked fitfully at the papered fish. " Do you
know planchette ? " she asked, in a faint sing-
song, turning with a little bold pounce to the
salt-cellar close at Miriam's left hand. " Oh-h-h "
said Miriam intelligently. ..." Planchette . . .
Planchette . . . Cloches de Corneville. Plan-
quette. Is planchette a part of all this ? . . .
Planchette, a French dressmaker, perhaps." She
turned fully round to Mrs. Corrie and waited,
smiling sympathetically. " It's deadly uncanny,"
Mrs. Corrie went on, " I can tell you. Deadly"
Her delicate voice stopped fearfully and she
glanced at Miriam with a laugh. " I don't
believe I know what it is," said Miriam, sniffing
in the scent of the mimosa and savouring the
delicate flavour of the fish. These things would
go on after planchette was disposed of, she
thought, and took a sip of hock.

" It's deadly. I hope Melie'll bring one.
She's a fairy ; real Devonshire fairy. She'll
make it work. We'll have such fun."

" What is it ? " said Miriam a little uneasily.
... A fairy and a planchette and fun — silly
laughter, some tiresome sort of game ; a hoax.

HONEYCOMB 15

" I tell you all about it, all, all . . ." intoned
Mrs. Corrie provisionally, whilst the maid handed
the tiny ready-cut saddle of lamb. " Spinnich ?
Ah, nicey spinnich ; you can leave us that,
Stokes. . . . Oh, you must have Burgundy —
spin-spin and Burgundy ; awful good ; a thimble-
full, half a glass ; that's right."

The clear dry hock had leapt to Miriam's
brain and opened her eyes, the Burgundy spread
through her limbs, a warm silky tide. The green
flavour of the spinach, tasting of earth, and yet
as smooth as cream intoxicated her. Surely
nothing could so delicately build up your strength
as these small stubby slices of meat so tender
that it seemed to crumble under your teeth. . . .
" It's an awful thing. It whirls about and writes
with a pencil. Writes. All sorts of things,"
said Mrs. Corrie, with a little frightened laugh.
" Really. No nonsense. Names. Any thin'.
Whatever you're thinkin' about. It's uncanny,
I can tell you."

" It sounds most extraordinary," said Miriam,
with a firm touch of scepticism.

" You wait. Oh — you wait," sang Mrs. Corrie
in a whisper. " I shall find out, I shall find out, if
you're not careful, I shall find out his name."

16 HONEYCOMB

Miriam blushed violently. " Ah-ha," beamed
Mrs. Corrie in a soft high monotone. " / shall
find out. We'll have such fun."

" Do you believe in it ? " said Miriam, half
irritably.

" You wait — you wait — you wait, young lady.
Melie'll be here on Friday day."

The rich caramel, the nuts and dessert, Mrs.
Corrie's approval of her refusal of port wine
with her nuts, the curious, half -drowsy chill
which fell upon the table, darkening and sharpen-
ing everything in the room as the broken brown
nutshells increased upon their trellis-edged plates
were under the spell of the strange woman. Mrs.
Corrie kept on talking about her; Melie — born
in Devonshire, seeing fairies, having second sight,
being seen one day staring into space by a sports-
man, a fisherman, a sort of poet, who married
her and brought her to London. Did Mrs.
Corrie really believe that she knew everything ?
" I believe she's a changeling," laughed Mrs.
Corrie at last — " oh, it's cold. Chum-long,
let's go."

HONEYCOMB 17

4

" We can't go into my little room," said Mrs.
Corrie, turning to Miriam with a little excited
catch in her voice, as the bead curtain rattled
gently into place behind them. " It's bein' re-
done." Just ahead of them, beyond a mystery
of palms to right and left, a door opened upon
warm brilliance. Miriam heard the busy tranquil
flickering of a fire. " I see," she said eagerly.
" Why does she explain ? " she wondered, as they
passed into the large clear room. How light it
was, fairyland, light and fragrant and very warm.
The light was high ; creamy bulbs, high up, and
creamy colour everywhere, cream and gold stripes,
stripy chairs of every shape, some of them with
twisted gilt legs, curious oval pictures in soft
half-tones, women in hats, strange groups, all
tilted forward like mirrors.

" Ooogh — barracky, ain't it ? I hate empty
droin'-rooms," said Mrs. Corrie, sweeping swiftly
about, pushing up great striped easy chairs
towards the fire. Miriam stood in a dream,
watching the little pale hands in the clear light,
dead white fingers, rings, twinkling green and
sea blue, and the thin cruel flash of tiny diamonds

i8 HONEYCOMB

. . . harpy hands . . . dreadful and clever . . .
one of the hands came upon her own and com-
pelled her to drop into, a large cushioned chair.

" Like him black ? " came the gay voice.
Coffee cups tinkled on a little low table near
Mrs. Corrie's chair. " I'm glad you're tall.
Kummel ? "

" She doesn't know German pronunciation,"
thought Miriam complacently.

:e I suppose I am," she said, accepting a trans-
parent little cup and refusing the liqueur.
Those strange eyes were blue with dark rings
round the iris and there were fine deep wrinkles
about the mouth and chin. She looked so pic-
turesque sitting there, like something by an " old
master," but worn and tired. Why was she so
happy — if she thought so many things were
deadly awful. . . .

" How's Gabbie Anstruther ? "

" Oh — you see — I don't know Mrs. Anstruther.
They are patients of my future brother-in-law.
It was all arranged by letter."

" About your comin' here, you mean. I say —
you'll never get engaged, will you ? Promise ? "

Miriam got up out of her deep chair and stood
with her elbow on the low mantel staring into

HONEYCOMB 19

the fire. She heard phrases from Mrs. Anstruther's
letter to Bennett as if they were being spoken by
a tiresome grave voice. " She doats upon her
children. What she really wants is someone to
control her ; read Shakespeare to her and get
her into the air." Mrs. Corrie did not want
Shakespeare. That was quite clear. And it was
quite clear that she wanted a plain dull woman
she could count on ; always there, in a black dress
She doated. Someone else, working for her, in
her pay, would look after the children and do the
hard work.

"The kiddies were riffickly 'cited. Wanted
to stay up. I hope you're strict, very strict, eh ? "

" I believe I'm supposed to understand dis-
cipline," said Miriam stiffly, gazing with weary
eyes at the bars of the grate.

" We were in an awful fix before we heard
about you. Poor old Bunnikin breakin' down.
She adored them — they're angels. But she
hadn't the tiniest bit of a hold over them. Used
to cry when they were naughty. You know.
Poor old kiddies. Want them to be awfully
clever. Work like a house afire. I know you're
clever. . P'raps you won't stay with my little
heathens. Do try and stay. I can see you've

20 HONEYCOMB

got just what they want. Strong-minded, eh ?
I*m an imbecile. So was poor old Bunnikin.
D'you like kiddies ? "

" Oh, I'm very fond of children," said Miriam
despairingly. She stared at the familiar bars.
They were the bars of the old breakfast-room
grate at home, and the schoolroom bars at
Banbury Park. There they were again hard and
black in the hard black grate in the midst of all
this light and warmth and fragrance. Nothing
had really changed. Black and hard. Someone's
grate. She was alone again. Mrs. Corrie would
soon find out. " I think children are so inter-
esting" she said conversationally, struck by a
feeling of orginality in the remark. Perhaps
children were interesting. Perhaps she would
manage to find the children interesting. She
glanced round at Mrs. Corrie. Her squarish
white face was worn. Her eyes and neck looked
as though all the life and youth had been
washed away from them by some long sorrow.
Her smile was startling . . . absolute confidence
and admiration . . . like mother. But she would
find out if one were not really interested.

HONEYCOMB 21

5

That night Miriam roamed about her room
from one to another of the faintly patterned
blue hangings. Again and again she faced each
one of them. For long she contemplated the
drapery of the window space, the strange forest-
like confusion made in the faint pattern of tiny
leaves and flowers by the many soft folds, and
turned from it for a distant view of the draperies
of the bed and the French wardrobe. Sitting
down by the fire at last she had them all in her
mind's eye. She was going to be with them all
night. If she stayed with them long enough she
would wake one day with red bronze hair and a
pale face and thin white hands. And by that
time life would be all strange draperies and strange
inspiring food and mocking laughing people who
floated about hiding a great secret and servants
who were in the plot, admiring and serving it
and despising as much as anybody the vulgar
things outside.

Her black dress mocked at these thoughts and
she looked about for her luggage. Finding the
Saratoga trunk behind the draperies of the
French wardrobe she extracted her striped

22 HONEYCOMB

flannelette dressing-gown and presently sat down
again with loosened hair. Entrenched in her
familiar old dressing-gown, she felt more com-
pletely the power of her surroundings. Whatever
should happen in this, strange house she had sat
for one evening in possession of this room. It
was added for ever to the other things. And
this one evening was more real than all the
fifteen months at Banbury Park. It was so far
away from everything, trams and people and
noise — it was in the centre of beautiful exciting
life ; perfectly still and secure. Creeping to the
window she held back the silk-corded rim of a
curtain — a deep window-seat, a row of oblong
lattices with leaded diamond panes. One of the
windows was hasped a few inches open. No
sound came in ... soft moist air and the smell
of trees. Nothing but woods all round, every-
where.

6

The next morning a housemaid tapped at
Miriam's door half an hour after she had called
her to say that her breakfast was laid in the
schoolroom. Going out on to the landing she
discovered the room by a curious rank odour
coming towards her through a half-opened door.

HONEYCOMB 23

Pushing open the door she found a large clear
room, barely furnished, carpeted with linoleum
and cold in the morning light pouring through
an undraped window. In the grate smoked a
half-ignited fire and one corner of the hearth-rug
caught by a foot lay turned back. Across one
end of the baize-covered table a cloth was laid,
and on it stood a small crowded tray : a little
teapot, no cosy, some rather thick slices of bread
and butter, a small dish of marmalade, a small
plate and cup and saucer piled together, and a
larger plate on which lay an unfamiliar fish,
dark brown, curiously dried and twisted and
giving out a strong salt smoky odour. Miriam
sat uncomfortably on the edge of a cane chair
getting through her bread and butter and tea
and one mouthful of the strong dry fish, feeling,
with the door still standing wide, like a traveller
snatching a hasty meal at a buffet. She tried to
collect her thoughts on education. Little
querulous excited sounds came to her from
across the wide landing. Presently there came
the swift flountering of a print dress across the
landing and Wiggerson, long and willowy and
capless with a cold red nose and large red hands,
her thin small head looking very young with its

24 HONEYCOMB

revealed bunch of untidy hair, appeared in the
schoolroom doorway with an unconscious smile
hesitating on her pale lips and in her pale blue
eyes. " It isn't very comfortable for you," she
said in a hurried voice. " I say, my word " ;
she went to the chilly grate and bent down for
the poker. Miriam glanced at the solicitous
droop of her long figure. " Stokes hasn't half
laid it," went on Wiggerson ; " if I were you I
should have breakfast in my room. They all do,
except Mr. Corrie when he's at home. The
other young lady was daily ; she didn't stop. I
should, if I were you," she finished, getting
lightly to her feet. She stood between the door
and the fireplace, half turned away, and gazing
into space with her pale strong eyes, every line
in her long pure unconscious figure waiting for
Miriam's response.

" Do you like me, Wiggerson ? " said Miriam
within, " you'll have toothache and neuralgia
with that thin head. You're devoted to your re-
lations. You've got a tiresome sickly old mother.
You'll never know you're a servant. ..." I think
perhaps I will," she drawled, clearing her throat.

" All right," said Wiggerson, with a lit face.
" I'll tell them."

CHAPTER II

AS Miriam sat having tea with the children in
-/TL the dining-room the brougham drove up to
the door. " There's someone arriving," she said,
hoping to distract the attention of the children
from her fumblings with the teapot and the hot
water jug. They had certainly never met anyone
who did not know how to pour out tea. But
they were taken in by her bored tone.

" It's only Joey," said Sybil, frowning tran-
quilly, her lively penetrating brown eyes fixed
on the table just ahead of the small plate nearly
covered by a mass of raspberry jam from which
she ate with a teaspoon in the intervals of taking
small bites from a thin piece of bread and butter
held conveniently near her mouth as she sat with
one elbow on the table. " She's always here."
She looked across the table and met the soft
brown eyes of the boy. They had been wander-
ing absently about her square pale face and her
short straggling red hair as she answered Miriam.

25

26 HONEYCOMB

;c Jenooshalet," he said, lisping over the s and
smiling meditatively.

' Jenoo.rZ>," responded Sybil, and they both
laughed drunkenly.

' What Pm finking," said the boy, putting a
teaspoonful of jam into his teacup and speaking
with a stammering difficulty that drew deep
lines in his thin face ; " what's worrying me is
she'll have Rollo after tea instead of us ...
Vat's what I'm finking."

" D'you like bays ? " said Sybil, throwing a
fleeting glance in the direction of Miriam.

" Yes, I do, I think," said Miriam at random,
patting her hair and wondering if the children
had been to Wey mouth.

" Oh, Soy." Sybil flung her arms tightly
round her thin body and sat grinning at her
brother. Her old blue and white striped overall,
her sparse hair and the ugly large gap between
her two large front teeth seemed to set her
apart from her surroundings. For a moment it
seemed to Miriam that the large quiet room
looking through two high windows on to a stretch
of tree-shaded lawn, the cheerful little spread of
delicate white china at one end of the long table,
the preserves and cakes, the cress sandwiches and

HONEYCOMB 27

thin bread and butter were all there for her
appreciation alone, the children somehow pro-
fane and accidental, having no right to be there.
But they had been in these surroundings, the girl
for twelve the boy for eight years. They had
never known anything else. For years life had
been for them just what it was to-day — break-
fast in bed, chirping at their mother from the
dressing-rooms where they slept, and scolding at
Stokes as she waited on their toilet ; jocularly
and impatiently learning lessons from little
text-books for an hour or so in the morning,
spending their afternoons cantering about the
commons and along the sandy roadways with the
groom ; driving with their mother or walking
with the governess and every day coming in at
the end of the afternoon to this cosy, dainty
grown-up tea, with their strange untroubled
brooding faces. They would grow up and be
exactly like their parents. They did not know
anything about their fate. It was a kind of
prison. Perhaps they knew. Perhaps that was
what they were always brooding over. No, they
did not mind. Their musings were tranquil.
They were waiting. They had silent conversa-
tions all the time. To be with them after being

28 HONEYCOMB

so long with the straining, determined, secretly
ambitious children at Banbury Park was a great
relief . . . the way they moved their heads and
used their hands . . . the boy's hands were
wonderful, the palest fine brown silk, quick
eloquent little claws, promising understanding
and support. Fine little hands and steady gentle
brown eyes.

" Bays."

" Bright bays."

"Roans."

" Strawberry roans."

" Chestnuts."

" Chestnut bays."

The children sat facing each other, each with
clasped hands, and eyes lit with dreams. Miriam
listened. Bay, then, must be that curious liver
colour that was neither brown nor chestnut.

" Our ponies are bay," said Sybil quickly, with
flushed face. " Boy's and mine, the brougham
and victoria horses are chestnut bays and we've
got two dogs, a whippet bitch, she's in the stables
now, and a Great Dane; I'm going to have a
Willoughby pug pup on my birthday."

HONEYCOMB 29

Mrs. Corrie was standing in the hall when the
little tea-party came out of the dining-room.
She raised her head and stood shaped in the well-
cut lines of her long brown and fawn check coat
and skirt against the bead curtain that led to the
drawing-room, looking across at them. The boy
tottered blindly across the hall with arms out-
stretched. " Oh, Rollo, Rollo," he said brokenly,
as he reached her, pressing his hands up against
her grey suede waistcoat and his face into her
skirt, " are we going to h — ave you ? "

Mrs. Corrie began singing in a thin laughing
voice, taking the boy by the wrists.

" No, no," he said sharply, " let me hold you a
minute." But Mrs. Corrie danced, forcing his
steps as he pressed against her. Up and down
the hall they capered while Sybil pranced round
them whirling her skirts and clapping her hands.
Miriam sank into a settee. The cold March
sunlight streaming in through the thinly curtained
windows painted the sharply bobbing figures in
faint shadows on the wall opposite her.

30 HONEYCOMB

3

When the dancers were breathless the little
party strayed into the drawing-room. Presently
they were gathered at the piano. Mrs. Corrie
sat on a striped ottoman and peering closely
picked out the airs of songs that made Miriam
stare in amazement. They all sang. Slowly and
stumblingly with many gasps of annoyance from
Mrs. Corrie and the children violently assaulting
each other whenever either of them got ahead of
the halting accompaniment, they sang through
all the songs in an album with a brightly decorated
paper cover. But in their performance there was
no tune, no rhythm, and the words spoken out
slowly and separately were intolerable to her.
One song they sang three times. Its chorus

Stiboo — stilw,
Sti-ibbety-00
Sti-ibbety-b0<?,
Stib^,

which Sybil could sing without the piano with an
extraordinary flourishing rapidity, pirouetting
as she sang, they attacked again and again,
slowly and waveringly, fitting the syllables note
by note into the printed line of disconnected

HONEYCOMB 31

jerkily tailed quavers. . . . They thought this
was music. Encouraged at last by the fervour of
the halting performance Miriam found herself
seated at the piano attacking the score. They
went through the songs from the beginning,
three thin blissful wavering tremulous voices,
with a careful perfect monotony of emphasis,
uninfluenced by any variation of accent or in-
flection introduced by Miriam into the accom-
paniment. Looking round as they reached the
end she saw flushed rapt faces with happy
eyes gleaming through the gathering twilight.
They smiled at her as they sang. When they had
finished they lit the piano candles and sang
" Stiboo " once more.

4

" Sti-boo, stibee, sti-ibbety-oo, sti-ibbety boo,
stibee," sang Miriam, getting into the large
square bodice of her silkette evening dress. Its
great oblong box-like elbow sleeves more than
filled the mirror as she stood. They were
stiffened with stout muslin, and stood squarely
out from shoulder to elbow, so that the little
band of silk edged with a piping of salmon pink
velveteen which held them round the arm just

32 HONEYCOMB

above the elbow could only be seen when she
raised her arms. The piping was repeated round
the square neck of her bodice, cutting in front
across the bust just below the collar bone and at
the back just above her shoulder blades. She
sang the little refrain at intervals until her toilet
was completed by the pinning of a small salmon
pink velvet bow against the left side of the hard
mass of her coiled hair and went humming down-
stairs into the hall. The soles of her new patent
leather shoes felt pleasantly smooth against the
thick carpet. She went across the hall to prop
a foot against the fender and take one more
reassuring look at the little disc of steel beads
adorning her toe. " Stiboo "

" Won't you come in here ? " said a soft
staccato bass voice, a woman's voice, but deep
and rounded like the voice of a deep-chested
watch-dog barking single soft notes after a
furious outbreak.

Miriam looked round. Wiggerson was lighting
the big lamp in the dining-room, peering up
under the rose-coloured shade. " In here,"
repeated the deep voice, smiling, and Miriam's
eyes discovered that the small door set back
between the dining-room and the window on

HONEYCOMB 33

the left side of the hall door was open, showing
part of a curious soft brown room ; a solid brown
leather covered secretaire, with a revolving chair
between its pillars of drawers, set back in the bow
of a small window, a little bronze lamp with a
plain buff-coloured shade standing near a pile of
large volumes on the secretaire, a piece of wall
covered with a dark silky-looking brown paper
shining in the glow of an invisible fire. She went
forward across the hall into the room with a
polite pleased hesitating smile. There was a
faint rich exciting odour in the warm little
room . . . cigars . . . leather ... a sort of
deep freedom. The rest of the house seemed
suddenly far away. Coloured drawings of houses
on the little brown walls, two enormous deep
low leather arm-chairs drawn up on either side
of an enormous fire, a littered mantelshelf. " I
saw you froo the crack," said a lady, fitted
deeply into one of the large chairs. She held out
a small hand when Miriam was near enough to
take it and said softly and lazily, "You're the
new guvnis, aren't you ? I'm Joey Banks."

" Yes, I came yesterday," said Miriam serenely.

Sinking into the second arm-chair she crossed
her knees and beamed into the fire. What

34 HONEYCOMB

perfect security. . . . She turned to Mr. Cor
unknown and mysteriously away somewhere in
London to thank him for setting her here, pro-
tected from the whole world in the deeps of his
study chair — all the worry and the noise and the
fussing people shut away. If suddenly he came
in she would not thank him, but he would know.
He would be sitting in the other arm-chair, and
she would say, " What do you think about every-
thing ? " Not so much to hear what he thought,
but because some of his thoughts would be her
thoughts. Thought was the same in everybody
who thought at all. She would sit back and rest
and hear an understanding voice. He might be
heavy and fat. But a leading Q.C. must have
thoughts . . . and he had been thin once . . .
and there were those books . . . and he would
read newspapers ; perhaps too many newspapers.
He would know almost at once that she thought
he read too many newspapers. She would have
to conceal that to hear the voice going on and
leaving her undisturbed.

5

Of course people like this wore evening dress
every day. You could only rest and think and

HONEYCOMB 35

talk and be happy without collars and sleeves —
with the cool beaded leather against one's neck
and arms in the firelight. . . .

She gazed familiarly into her companion's
eyes taking in her soft crimson silk evening dress
with its wide folded belt of black velvet and the
little knots of black about the square sleeves, as
the eyes smiled long and easily into hers . . .
the smile of one of the girls at the Putney school,
the same dark fringed caressing smiling eyes set
in delicately bulging pale brown cheeks, the same
little frizz of dark hair. She felt for the name,
but could only recall the sense of the girl as she
had sat, glints of fear and hard watchfulness in
the beautiful eyes, trying to copy her neighbour's
exercise. This girl's dull hair was fluffed cloudily,
and there was no uneasiness in the eyes. Prob-
ably she too had been a duffer at school and had
had to crib things. But she had left all that
behind and her smile was — perfect.

" You look like an Oriental princess," said
Miriam, gazing.

Joey flushed and smiled more deeply, but
without making the smallest movement.

" Do I, weally ? "

" Exactly," said Miriam, keeping her own pose

36 HONEYCOMB

with difficulty. She knew she had flung up her
head and spoken emphatically. But the girl was
such a wonderful effect — she wanted her to be
able to see herself . . . she was not quite of the
same class as the Corries, or different, somehow.
Miriam gazed on. Raising the large black
cushion a little, turning her head and pressing
her cheek into it, her eyes still on Miriam's, Joey
laughed a short contralto gurgle, bringing the
sharp dimples and making her cheeks bulge
slightly on either side of the chin.

" I brought it in from Rollo's room," she said.
" I like bein' in here. Rollo never comes in ; but
she always has a fire in here when she's got people
stoppin'. You can pop in here whenever you
like when Felix isn't at home. It's jolly. I like it."

Miriam looked into the fire and thought.
Joey, too, liked talking to Mr. Corrie in his room
when he was not there. He must be one of those
charming sort of men, rather weak, who went on
liking people. Joey was evidently an old friend
of the family and still liked him. She evidently
liked even to mention his name. He couldn't be
really anything much ... or perhaps Joey didn't
really know him at all. Joey did not live there.
She came and went.

HONEYCOMB 37

" Of course you haven't seen Felix yet, have
you ? "

" No."

Joey straightened her head on her pillow.

" It's not the least use me tryin' to describe
him to you," she breathed in broken tones.

Miriam struggled uneasily with her thoughts
... a leading Q.C. — about forty. ..." Oh,
do try," she said, a little fearfully . . . how
vulgar . . . just like a housemaid ... no ; Wig-
gerson would never have said such a thing, nor
asked at all. It was treachery to Mr. Corrie.
If Joey said anything more about him she would
never be able to speak to him freely.

" He's divine," said Joey, smiling into the fire.

How nice of Joey to be so free with her and
want her to like him too . . . the gong. They
both rose and peered into the little strip of
mirror in the small overmantel . . . divine might
mean anything . . . divine . . . oh, quite too
utterly too- too . . . greenery-yellery — Gros-
venor-gallery — foot-in-the-grave young man.

CHAPTER III
i

THE next day the ground was powdered with
snow. Large snowflakes were hurrying
through the air driving to and fro on a harsh
wind. The wind snored round the house like
a flame and bellowed in the chimneys. An
opened window let in the cold air and the smell
of the snow. No sound came from the woods.
The singing of the birds and the faint sound of
the woods had gone.

But when Miriam left her room to go across
to the schoolroom and wait for the children she
found the spring in the house. The landing was
bright with the light streaming through many
open doors. Rooms were being prepared. On
a large tray on the landing table lay a mass of
spring flowers and little flowered bowls of many
shapes and sizes filled with fresh water. Stokes
and Wiggerson were fluttering in and out of the
rooms carrying frilled bed-linen, lace-edged towels
and flowered bed-spreads.

38

HONEYCOMB 39

People with money could make the spring
come as soon as the days lengthened. Clear
bright rooms, bright clean paint, soft coloured
hangings, spring flowers in the bright light on
landings. The warmth from stoves and fires
seemed as if it came from the sun. Its glow
changed suddenly to the glow of sunlight. It
drew the scent of the flowers into the air. And
with the new scent of the new flowers something
was moving and leaping and dancing in the air.
Outside the wintry weather might go on and on
as though the spring would never come.

In a dull cheap villa there might be a bunch of
violets in a bowl on a whatnot. Snuffing very close
you could feel the tide of spring wash through
your brain. But only in the corner where the
violets were. In cold rooms upstairs you could
remember the violets and the spring ; but the
spring did not get into the house.

There was an extraordinary noise going on
downstairs. Standing inside the schoolroom
door Miriam listened. Joey's contralto laugh
coming up in gusts, the sound of dancing feet,
the children shouting names, Mrs. Corrie repeat-
ing them in her laughing wavering chalky voice.
Joey ; certainly Joey was not dancing about.

40 HONEYCOMB

She was probably sitting on the sofa watching
them, and thinking. Fancy their being so excited
about people coming. Just like any ordinary
people. She went into the schoolroom saying
over the names to herself. " Melie to-day . . .
Dad and Mr. Staple-Craven to-morrow . . . the
Bean-pole for Sunday . . . someone they knew
very well. It might be either a tall man or a tall
woman. . . . They made the house spring-like
because people were coming. Would the people
notice that the house was spring-like ? Would
they realise ? People did not seem to realise
anything. They would patronise the flowers . . .
they ought to feel wild with joy ; join hands and
dance round the flowers.

At lunch time the door at the far end of the
dining-room stood open showing the shrouded
length of a billiard-table, and beyond it at the
far end in the gloom a squat oak chimney-piece
littered with pipes and other small objects. The
light, even from the overcast sky, came in so
brilliantly that the holland cover looked almost
white. There must be several windows ; perhaps
three. What a room to have, just for a billiard-
room. A quiet, mannish room, waiting until it
was wanted, the pockets of the table bulging

HONEYCOMB 41

excitingly under the cover, the green glass
supports under the squat round stoutly spind-
ling legs, a bit of a huge armchair showing near
the fireplace, the end of a sofa, the green
shaded lamps low over the table, the dark un-
tidy mantelpiece, tobacco, books, talks, billiards.
In there too the spring flowers stood ready on
the table. They would be put somewhere on the
wide dark mantel, probably on a corner out of the
way. " We used to play table billiards at home,"
said Miriam at random, longing to know what
part the billiard-room played in the week-end.

" Billy-billy," said Mrs. Corrie, « oh, we'll
have some fun. We'll all play."

" It was such a bore stretching the webbing,"
said Miriam critically, avoiding Sybil's eager
eyes.

" It must have been — but how awfully jolly to
have billiards. I simply adaw billiards," said
Joey fervently.

" Such a fearful business getting them abso-
lutely taut," pursued Miriam; feeling how much
the cream caramel was enhanced by the sight of
the length, beyond the length of the dining-room,
of that bright long heavy room. She imagined
it lit and people walking about amongst the

42 HONEYCOMB

curious lights and shadows with cues — and
cigarettes ; quiet intent faces. Englishmen.
Did the English invent billiards ?

" Poor old Joey. Wish you weren't going to
the dentist. You won't be here when Melie
comes."

" Don't mind the dentist a scrap. I'm looking
forward to it. I shall see Melie to-night."

She doesn't like her, thought Miriam ; people
being together is awful ; like the creaking of
furniture.

2

Melie arrived an hour before dinner time.
Miriam heard Mrs. Corrie taking her into the
room next to her own with laughter and many
phrases. A panting, determined voice, like a
voice out of a play, the thick, smooth, rather
common voice of a fair-haired middle-aged lady
in a play kept saying, " The pores, my dear. I
must open my pores after the journey. I'm
choked with it."

Presently Melie's door closed and Mrs.
Corrie tapped and put her head inside Miriam's
door. " She's goin' to have a steam bath on her
floor, got an injarubber tent on the floor and a

HONEYCOMB 43

spirit lamp. She's gettin' inside it. Isn't she an
old cure I "

" She's thinking more about her food than
anything they're saying ; she doesn't really care
about them a bit," thought Miriam at dinner,
gazing again and again across at Mrs. Staple-
Craven's fat little shape seated opposite herself
in a tightly fitting pale blue silk dress whose
sleeves had tiny puffs instead of the fashionable
large square sleeves. Watching her cross un-
conscious face, round and blue-eyed and all pure
" milk and roses," her large yellow head with a
tiny twist of hair standing up like the handle of
a jug, exactly on the top of the crown, her fat
white hands with thick soft curly fingers and
bright pink nails, the strange blue stare that went
from thing to thing on the table, hearing her
thick smooth heedless voice, with its irrelevant
assertions and "statements, Miriam wondered
how she had come to be Mrs. Staple-Craven.
She was no more Mrs. Staple-Craven than she
was sitting at Mrs. Corrie's table. She was not
really there. She was just getting through, and
neither Mrs. Corrie nor Joey really knew this. At
the same time she was too stout and gluttonous
to be still really a fairy in Devonshire. Where

44 HONEYCOMB

was she ? What did she think ? She went on
and on because she was afraid someone might
ask her that.

Although Joey had been to have her hair dyed
and had not been to the dentist at all she was not
pretending nearly so much. She was a little
ashamed. Why had she said she was going to
the dentist and come back with sheeny bronzy
hair, ashamed ? She had been worrying about
her looks. Perhaps she was more than twenty-
one. Nan Babington said no one need mind
being twenty-one if they were engaged, but if
not it was a frantic age to be. Joey was a poor
worried thing, just like any other girl.

3

When they were safely ensconced round the
drawing-room fire Mrs. Staple-Craven sat very
upright in her chair with her plump little hands
on either arm and her eyes fixed on the blaze.
Joey pleading toothache had said good night and
gone away with her coffee. There was a moment's
silence.

" You'd never think I'd been fairly banged to
death by the spirits last night," said Mrs. Staple-
Craven in a thick flat reproachful narrative

HONEYCOMB 45

tone. It sounds like a housekeeper giving an
order to a servant she knows won't obey
her, thought Miriam, swishing more comfort-
ably into her chair. If Mrs. Craven would talk
there would be no need to do anything.

" Ah-ha," said Mrs. Craven, still looking at
the fire, " something's pleasing Miss Henderson."

" Is she rejoicin' ? Tell us about the spirits,
Melie. I'm deadly keen. Deadly. She mustn't
be too delighted. I've told her she's not to get
engaged."

" Engaged ? " enquired Mrs. Craven, of the
fire.

" She's promised," said Mrs. Corrie, turning
off the lights until only one heavily shaded lamp
was left, throwing a rosy glow over Melie's com-
pact form.

" She won't, if she's not under the star, to be

sure."

" Oh, she mustn't think about stars. Why
should she marry ? "

Miriam looked a little anxiously from one to
the other.

" You've shocked her, Julia," said Mrs. Staple-
Craven. " Never mind at all, my dear. You'll
marry if you're under the star."

46 HONEYCOMB

" Star, star, beautiful star, a handsome one
with twenty thousand a year," sang Mrs. Corrie.

" I don't think a man has any right to be hand-
some," said Miriam desperately — she must man-
age to keep the topic going. These women were
so terrible — they filled her with fear. She must
make them take back what they had said.

" A handsome man's much handsomer than a
pretty woman," said Mrs. Craven.

" It's cash, cash, cash — that's what it is,"
chanted Mrs. Corrie softly.

" Oh, do you ? " said Miriam. " I think a
handsome man's generally so weak."

Mrs. Craven stared into the fire.

" You take the oae who's got the ooftish, my
friend," said Mrs. Corrie.

" But you say I'm not to marry."

" You shall marry when my poor little old
kiddies are grown up. We'll find you a very nice
one with plenty of money."

" Then you don't think marriage is a failure,"
said Miriam, with immense relief.

Mrs. Corrie leaned towards her with laughter
in her clear light eyes. It seemed to fill the
room. " Have some more coffy-drink ? "

" No, thanks," said Miriam, shivering.

HONEYCOMB 47

" Sing us something — she sings, Melie —
German songs. Isn't she no end clever ? r

" Does she ? " said Mrs. Craven. " Yes. She's
got a singing chin. Sing us a pretty song, my
dear."

As she fluttered the leaves of her Schumann
album she saw Mrs. Craven sit back with closed
eyes, and Mrs. Corrie still sitting forward in her
chair with her hands clasped on her knees gazing
with a sad white face into the flames.

" Ich grolle nicht, und wenn das Herz auch
bricht," sang Miriam, and thought of Germany.
Her listeners did not trouble her. They would
not understand. No English person would quite
understand — the need, that the Germans under-
stood so well — the need to admit the beauty of
things . . . the need of the strange expression
of music, making the beautiful things more
beautiful and of words when they were together
in the beauty of the poems. Music and poetry
told everything — whether you understood the
music or the words — they put you in the mood
that made things shine — then heart-break or
darkness did not matter. Things go on shining
in the end ; German landscapes and German
sunshine and German towns were full of this

48 HONEYCOMB

knowledge. In England there was something
besides — something hard.

" 'Menjous, ain't it ? " said Mrs. Corrie, as
she rose from the piano.

" If we lived aright we should all be singing,"
said Mrs. Craven, " it's natural."

4

" You look a duck."

Miriam stood still at the top of the stairs and
looked down into the hall. Mrs. Staple-Craven
was standing under the largest kmp near the
fireplace looking up at a tall man in a long ulster.
Grizzled hair and a long face with a long pointed
grizzled beard — she was staring up at him with
her eyes " like saucers " and her face pink, white,
gold, " like a full moon " — how awful for him
. . . he'd come down from town probably in a
smoking carriage, talking, and there she was and
he had to say something.

" I've just had my bath," said Mrs. Craven,
without altering the angle of her gaze.

" You look a duck," said the tall man fussily,
half turning away.

Standing with 'his back to the couple, opening
letters at the nail table was a little man in a neat

HONEYCOMB 49

little overcoat with a silk hat tilted back on his
head. His figure had a curious crooked jaunty
appearance, the shoulders a little crooked and
the little legs slightly bent. " It's Mr. Corrie,"
mused Miriam, moving backwards as he turned
and went swiftly out banging the front door
behind him. " He looks like a jockey " ; she got
herself back into her room until the hall should
be clear. " He's gone down to the stables." She
listened to the quick jerky little footsteps crunch-
ing along the gravel outside her window.

Soon after the quick little steps sounded on
the stairs and the children shouted from their
rooms. A door was opened and shut and for
five minutes there was a babel of voices. Then
the steps came out again and went away down
the passage leading off the landing to the bath-
room and a little spare room at the further end.
They passed the bathroom and the door of the
little room was opened and shut and locked.
Everything was silent in the house, but from the
room next to hers came the sounds of Mr. Craven
plunging quickly about and blowing and clearing
his throat. She had not heard him come up.

When at last she came downstairs she found
the whole party standing talking in the hall.

So HONEYCOMB

The second gong was drowning the terrible
voices, leaving nothing but gesticulating figures.
Presently Mr. Staple-Craven was standing before
her with Mrs. Come, and her hand was power-
fully wrung and released with a fussy emphatic
handshake cancelling the first impression. Mr.
Craven made some remark in a high voice,
lost by Miriam as Mr. Corrie came across to her
from talking to Joey under a lamp and took her
iiand. " Let me introduce your host," he said,
keeping her hand and placing it on his arm as he
turned towards the dining-room, " and take you
in to dinner."

Miriam went across the hall past the servants
waiting on either side of the dining-room door
and down the long room with her hand on the
soft coat sleeve of a neat little dinner jacket and
her footsteps led by the firm, disconnected,
jumpy footsteps of the little figure at her side.
There was a vague crowd of people coming along
behind. " Come on, everybody," Mrs. Corrie
had pealed delicately, and Mrs. Craven had said
in a thick smooth explanatory voice, " Of course
she's the greatest stranger."

The table was set with replicas of the little
groups of Venetian wine and finger glasses and

HONEYCOMB 51

fine silver and cutlery that had accompanied
Miriam's first sense of dining and when she
found herself seated at Mr. Corrie's left hand
opposite Mrs. Craven, with Joey away on her
left, facing Mr. Craven and Mrs. Corrie now
far away from her at the door end of the table, it
seemed as if these things had been got together
only for the use of the men. Why were women
there ? Why did men and women dine together ?
She would have liked to sit there and watch and
listen, but not to dine — not to be seen dining
by Mr. Corrie. It was extraordinary; this muddle
of men and women with nothing in common.
The men must hate it. She knew he did not
have such thoughts. All the decanters stood in a
little group between him and the great bowl of
flaring purple and crimson anemones that stood
in the centre of the table, and the way in which
he said when her soup came, " Have some
Moselle," and filled her glass, compelled her to
feel welcome to share the ritual of the feast.
She sat with bent head wrapped and protected,
hearing nothing as the voices sounded about the
table but the clear sweet narrow rather drawling
tones of Mr. Corrie's voice. She could hear it
talking to men, on racecourses, talking in clubs,

52 HONEYCOMB

laughing richly, rather drunkenly, at improper
stories in club smoking-rooms ; dining, talking
and lunching, dining, talking, talking every day
and sitting there now, wonderfully, giving her
security. She knew with perfect certainty that
nothing painful or disagreeable or embarrassing
could come near her in his presence. But he
knew nothing about her ; much less than Wigger-
son knew.

5

Joey felt the same, of course. But Joey was
laughing and talking in her deep voice and making
eyes. No, it was not the same. Joey was not
happy.

These people sitting at his table were supposed
to be friends. But they knew nothing about him.
He made little quiet mocking jokes and laughed
and kept things going. The Staple-Cravens knew
nothing at all about him. Mrs. Staple-Craven
did not care for anybody. She looked about and
always spoke as if she were answering an accusa-
tion that nobody had made — a dressmaker per-
suading you to have something and talking on
and on in fat tones to prevent your asking the
price. . . . Mr. Craven only cared for himself.
He was weak and pompous and fussy with a silly

HONEYCOMB 53

elaborate chivalrous manner. There was a
stillness round the table. Miriam felt that it
centred in her and was somehow her fault.
Never mind. She had successfully got through
whitebait and a quail. She would write home
about the quails and whitebait and the guests
and say nothing about her own silence — " Mr.
Staple-Craven is a poet . . ."

" Give Melie some more drink, Percy," said
Mrs. Corrie. " It's all wrong you two sittin'
together."

" She likes to sit near me, don't you, my duck ?"
said Mr. Craven, looking about for the wine and
bowing to and fro from his hips.

" You've been away so long," murmured Mr.
Corrie. " What sort of a place is Balone to stay
in?"

" Oh, nothing of a place in itself, nothing of a
place. Why do you call it Balone ? "

" Isn't that right ? That's right enough.
Come."

Miriam waited eagerly, her eyes on Mr.
Craven's pink face with the grizzled hair above
and below it. How perfectly awful he must look
in his nightshirt, she thought, and flushed
violently. " Balloyne," he was saying carefully,

54 HONEYCOMB

showing his red lips and two rows of unnaturally
even teeth. ..." Oh, Lord, they mean Bologne."
Both men were talking together. " B alloy ne is
perfectly correct ; the correct pronunciation,"
said Mr. Craven in a loud testy voice, with loose
lips. Mrs. Craven gazed up ... like a dis-
tressed fish . . . into his flushed face. Mrs.
Corrie was throwing out her little wavering
broken laughs. Keeping his angry voice Mr.
Craven went on. Miriam sat eagerly up and
glanced at Mr. Corrie. He was sitting with his
lips drawn down and his eyebrows raised . . .
his' law-court face. . . . Suddenly his face re-
laxed and the dark boyish brown head with the
clear thoughtful brow and the gentle kind eyes
turned towards her. " Let's ask Miss Henderson.
She shall be umpire."

6

Miriam carefully enunciated the word. The
blood sang in her ears as everyone looked her
way. The furniture and all the room mimicked
her. What did it matter, after all, the right
pronunciation ? It did matter ; not that Balone
was wrong, but the awfulness of being able to
miss the right sound if you had once heard it

HONEYCOMB 55

spoken. There was some awful meaning in the
way English people missed the right sound ; all
the names in India, all the Eastern words. How
could an English traveller hear hahreem, and
speak it hairum, Aswan and say Ass-ou-ann ? It
made them miss other things and think wrongly
about them. " That's more like it," she heard
Mr. Corrie say. There was sheeny braiding
round the edges of his curious little coat. " Got
you there, Craven, got you there," he was
saying somewhere in his mind ... his mind
went on by itself repeating things wearily. His
small austere face shone a little with dining ; the
corners of his thin lips slackened. " I can read
all your thoughts. None of you can disturb my
enjoyment of this excellent dinner ; none of
you can enhance it " . . . but he was not quite
conscious of his thoughts. Why did not the
others read them ? Perhaps they did. Perhaps
they were too much occupied to notice what
people were thinking. Perhaps in society people
always were. The Staple-Cravens did not notice.
But they were neither of them quite sure of them-
selves. Mrs. Corrie was busy all the time dancing
and singing somewhere alone, wistfully. Joey
kept throwing her smile at Mr. Corrie — lounging

56 HONEYCOMB

a little, easily, over the table and saying in her
mind, " I understand you, the others don't, I do,"
and he smiled at her, broadened the smile that had
settled faintly all over his face, now and again in
her direction. But she did not understand him.
" Divine," perhaps he was, or could be. But Joey
did not know him. She only knew that he had a
life of his own and no one else at the table had
quite completely. She did not know that with
all his worldly happiness and success and self-
control he was miserable and lost and needing
consolation . . . but neither did he. Perhaps
he never would ; would not find it out because
he had so many thoughts and was always talking.
So he thought he liked Joey. Because she smiled
and responded. " Jabez Balfour," he was saying
slowly, savouring the words and smiling through
his raised wineglass with half closed eyes. That
was for Mr. Staple-Craven ; there was some
exciting secret in it. Presently they would be
two men over their wine and nuts. Mr. Staple-
Craven took this remark for himself at once,
scorning the women with a thick polite insolence.
His lips shot out. " Ah," he said busily, " Jabez
Balfour, Jabez Balfour; ah," he swung from side to
side from his waist. " Let me see, Jabez . . ."

HONEYCOMB 57

" The Liberator scheme," said Mr. Corrie
interestedly with a bright young eye. " They've
got 'im this time ; fairly got 'im on the hop."

Jabez Balfour ; what a beautiful name. He
could not have done anything wrong. There was
a soft glare of anger in Mr. Corrie's eyes ; as if
he were accusing Mr. Staple-Craven of some
crime, or everybody. Perhaps one would hear
something about crime ; crime. That's crime-
somebody taking down a book and saying trium-
phantly, " that's crime," and people talking
excitedly about it, in the warm, at dinners . . .
like that moment at Richmond Park, the ragged
man with panting mouth, running . . . the quiet
grass, the scattered deer, the kindly trees, the
gentlemen with triumphant faces, running after
him ; enough, enough, he had suffered enough
. . . his poor face, their dreadful faces. He
knew more than they did. Crime could not be
allowed. People murdering you in your sleep.
But criminals knew that — the running man knew.
He was running away from himself. He knew
he had spoiled the grass and the trees and the
deer. To have stopped him and hidden him and
let him get over it. His poor face. . . . The
awful moment of standing up trying to say or do

58 HONEYCOMB

something, feeling so weak, trembling at the
knees, the man's figure pelting along in the dis-
tance, the two gentlemen passing, their white
waistcoats, homes, wives, bathrooms, stuffiness,
indigestion. . . .

7

" It comes perfectly into line with Biblical
records, my dear Corrie: a single couple, two
cells originating the whole creation."

" Pm maintaining that's not the Darwinian
idea at all. It was not a single couple, but
several different ones."

" We're not descended from monkeys at all.
It's not natural," said Mrs. Craven loudly, across
the irritated voices of the men. Their faces were
red. They filled the room with inaccurate phrases
pausing politely between each and keeping up a
show of being guest and host. How nice of them.
But this was how cultured people with incomes
talked about Darwin.

" The great thing Darwin did," said Miriam
abruptly, " was to point out the power of
environment in evolving the different species —
selecting."

" That's it, that's it ! " sang Mrs. Corrie.

HONEYCOMB 59

" Let's all select ourselves into the droin'-room."
" Now Pve offended the men and the women
too," thought Miriam.

8

Mr. Staple-Craven joined the ladies almost at
once. He came in leaving the door open behind
him and took a chair in the centre of the fireside
circle and sat giving little gasps and sighs of satis-
faction, spreading his hands and making little
remarks about the colours of the fire, and the
shape of the coffee cups. There he was and he
would have to be entertained, although he had
nothing at all to say and was puzzling about
himself and life all the time behind his involuntary
movements and polite smiles and gestures. Per-
haps he was uneasy because he knew there was
someone saying all the time, " You're a silly
pompous old man and you think yourself much
cleverer than you are." But it was not altogether
that ; he was always uneasy, even when he was
alone, unless he was rapidly preparing to go and
be with people who did not know what he was.
If he had been alone with the other three women
he would have forgotten for a while and half-
liked, half-despised them for their affability.

60 HONEYCOMB

" The great man's always at work, always at
work," he said suddenly, in a desperate sort of
way. They were like some sort of needlework
guild sitting round, just people, in the end ; it
made the surroundings seem quite ordinary.
The room fell to pieces ; one could imagine it
being turned out, or all the things being sold up
and dispersed.

" All work and no play," scolded Mrs. Craven,
" makes Jack . . ."

Miriam heard the swish of the bead curtain at
the end of the short passage.

" Heah he is," smiled Joey.

" A miracle," breathed Mrs. Craven, glancing
round the circle. Evidently he did not usually
come in.

Mr. Corrie came quietly into the room with
empty hands ; in the clear light he looked older
than he had done in the dining-room, fuller in
the face ; grey threads showed in his hair.
Everyone turned towards him. He looked at no
one. His loose little smile had gone. The
straight chair into which he dropped with a
dreamy careless preoccupied air was set a
little back from the fireside circle. No one
moved.

HONEYCOMB 61

" Absorbed the evidence, m'lud ? " squeaked
Mr. Craven.

" Ah-m," growled his host, clearing his throat.

Why can't they let him alone, Miriam asked
herself, and leave him to me, added her mind
swiftly. She sat glaring into the fire ; the room
had resumed its strange magic.

9

" Do you think it is wrong to teach children
things you don't believe yourself ? . . ." said
Miriam, and her thoughts rushed on. " You're
an unbeliever and I'm an unbeliever and both of
us despise the thoughts and opinions of ' people ' ;
you're a successful wealthy man and can amuse
yourself and forget ; I must teach and presently
die, teach till I die. It doesn't matter. I can be
happy for a while teaching your children, but
you know, knowing me a little what a task that
must be ; you know I know nothing and that I
know that nobody knows anything ; comfort
me. . . ."

She seemed to traverse a great loop of time
waiting for the answer to her hurried question.
Mr. Corrie had come into the drawing-room
dressed for dinner and sat down near her with a

62 HONEYCOMB

half-smile as she closed the book she was reading
and laid it on her knee and looked up with sen-
tences from " A Human Document " ringing
through her, and by the time her question was
out she knew it was unnecessary. But she had
flung it out and it had reached him and he had
read the rush of thoughts that followed it. She
might as well have been silent ; better. She had
missed some sort of opportunity. What would
have happened if she had been quite silent ?
His answer was swift, bmt in the interval they
had said all they would ever have to say to each
other. " Not in the least," he said, with a gentle
decisiveness.

She flashed thanks at him and sighed her relief.
He did not mind about religion. But how far
did he understand ? She had made him think
she was earnest about the teaching children some-
thing. He would be very serious about their
being " decently turned out." She was utterly
incapable of turning them out for the lives they
would have to lead. She envied and pitied and
despised those lives. Envied the ease and
despised the ignorance, the awful cruel struggle
of society that they were growing up for — no
joy, a career and sport for the boy, clubs, the

HONEYCOMB 63

weary dyspeptic life of the blase man, and for
the ^girl lonely cold hard bitter everlasting
" social " life. She envied the ease. Mr. Corrie
must know she envied the ease. Did he know
that she tried to hide her incapacity in order to
go on sharing the beauty and ease ?

" It is so difficult," she pursued helplessly, and
saw him wonder why she went on with the
subject and try to read the title of her book.
She did not mean to tell him that. That would
lead them away ; just nowhere. If only she could
tell him everything and get him to understand.
But that would mean admitting that she was
letting the children's education slide ; and he
was sitting there, confidently, so beautifully
dressed for dinner, paying her forty pounds a
year not to let the children's education slide. . . .
" It's an opportunity ; he's come in here, and
sat down to talk to me. I ought to tell him ; I'm
cheating." But he had looked for the title of
her book, and would have talked, about anything)
if she could have talked. He had a little air of
deference, quiet kind indulgent deference.
His neat little shoulders, bent as he sat turned
towards her, were kind. " I'm too young," she
cried in her mind. If only she could say aloud,

64 HONEYCOMB

" I'm too young — I can't do it," and leave every-
thing to him.

Or leave the children out altogether and talk
to him, man to man, about the book. She could
not do that. Everything she said would hurt her,
poisoned by the hidden sore of her incapability
to do anything for his children. He ought to
send them to school. But they would not go to a
school where anything real was taught. Science,
strange things about India and Ireland, the
aesthetic movement, Ruskin ; making things
beautiful. How far away all that seemed, that
sacred life of her old school — forgotten. The
thought of it was like a breath in the room. Did
he know of these things ? That sort 6f school
would take the children away, out of this kind of
society life. Make them think — for themselves.
He did not think or approve of thought. Even
the hard Banbury Park people would be nearer to
him than any of those things. . . . That was
the world. Nearly everyone seemed to be in it.
He was whimsically trying to read the title* of her
book with the little half-smile he shared with the
boy.

People came in and they both rose. It was
over. She sank back miserably into the offering

HONEYCOMB 65

of the moment, retiring into a lamp-lit corner
with her book, enclosing herself in its promise.

10

She sat long that night over her fire dipping
into the strange book, reading passages here and
there ; feeling them come nearer to her than
anything she had read before. She knew at
once that she did not want to read the book
through ; that it was what people called a
tragedy, that the author had deliberately made
it a tragedy ; something black and twisted and
painful, painful came to her out of every page ;
but seriously to read it right through and be
excited about the tragic story seemed silly and
pitiful. The thought of Mrs. Corrie and Joey
doing this annoyed her and impatiently she
wanted to tell them that there was nothing in it,
nothing in the things the author wanted to make
them believe ; that was fraud, humbug . . .
they missed everything. They could not see
through it, they read through to the happy
ending or the sad ending and took it all seriously.

She struggled in thought to discover why it
was she felt that these people did not read books
and that she herself did. She felt that she could

66 HONEYCOMB

look at the end, and read here and there a little
and know ; know something, something they did
not know. People thought it was silly, almost
wrong to look at the end of a book. But if it
spoilt a book, there was something wrong about
the book. If it was finished and the interest
gone when you know who married who, what was
the good of reading at all ? It was a sort of trick,
a sell. Like a puzzle that was no more fun when
you had found it out. There was something
more in books than that . . . even Rosa Nou-
chette Carey and Mrs. Hungerford, something
that came to you out of the book, any bit of it, a
page, even a sentence — and the " stronger " the
author was the more came. That was why
Ouida put those others in the shade, not, not,
not because her books were improper. It was her,
herself somehow. Then you read books to find
the author ! That was it. That was the differ-
ence . . . that was how one was different from
most people. . . . Dear Eve ; I have just dis-
covered that I don't read books for the story,
but as a psychological study of the author . . .
she must write that to Eve at once ; to-morrow.
It was rather awful and strange. It meant never
being able to agree with people about books,

HONEYCOMB 67

never liking them for the same reasons as other
people. . . . But it was true and exciting. It
meant . . . things coming to you out of books,
people, not the people in the books, but knowing,
absolutely, everything about the author. She
clung to the volume in her hand with a sense of
wealth. Its very binding, the feeling of it, the
sight of the slender serried edges of the closed
leaves came to her as having a sacredness . . .
and the world was full of books. ... It did not
matter that people went about talking about
nice books, interesting books, sad books, " stories "
— they would never be that to her. They were
people. More real than actual people. They
came nearer. In life everything was so scrappy
and mixed up. In a book the author was there
in every word.

Why did this strange book come so near,
nearer than any others, so that you felt the
writing, felt the sentences as if you were writing
them yourself? He was a sad pained man, all
wrong ; bothered and tragic about things,
believing in sad black horror. Then why did he
come so near ? Perhaps because life was sad.
Perhaps life was really sad. No ; it was somehow
the writing, the clearness. That was the thing.

68 HONEYCOMB

He himself must be all right, if he was so clear.
Then it was dangerous, dangerous to people like
Mrs. Corrie and Joey who would attend only to
what he said, and not to him . . . sadness or
gladness, saying things were sad or glad did not
matter ; there was something behind all the time,
something inside people. That was why it was
impossible to pretend to sympathise with people.
You don't have to sympathise with authors ;
you just get at them, neither happy nor sad ;
like talking, more than talking. Then that was
why the people who wrote moral stories were so
awful. They were standing behind the pages
preaching at you with smarmy voices. . . .
Bunyan ? . . . No. . . . He preached to himself
too . . . crying out his sins. . . . He did not
get between you and himself and point at a moral.
An author must show himself. Anyhow, he can't
help showing himself. A moral writer only sees
the mote in his brother's eye. And you see him
seeing it.

HONEYCOMB 69

ii

A long letter to Eve. . . . Eve would think
that she was showing off. But she would be
excited and interested too, and would think
about it a little. If only she could make Eve see
what a book was ... a dance by the author, a
song, a prayer, an important sermon, a message.
Books were not stories printed on paper, they
were people ; the real people ;..."! prefer
books to people " . . . " I know now why I
prefer books to people."

12

". . . I do wish you'd tell me more about
your extraordinary days. You must have extra-
ordinary days. I do. Perhaps everyone has.
Only they don't seem to know it ! "

. . . This morning, the green common lying
under the sun, still and wide and silent ; with a
little breeze puffing over it ; the intense fresh
green near the open door of the little Catholic
church ; the sandy pathway running up into
the common, hummocky and twisting and wind-
ing, its sand particles glinting in the sun, always
there, going on, whoever died or whatever hap-

70 HONEYCOMB

pened, winding amongst happy greenery, in and
out amongst the fresh smell of the common.
Inside the chapel the incense streaming softly up,
the seven little red lamps hanging in the cloud of
incense about the altar ; the moving of the thick
forest of embroidery on the cope of the priest.
Funny when he bobbed, but when he just moved
quietly, taking a necessary step, all the colour of
the forest on his cope moving against the still
high wide colours of the chancel. If only anyone
could express how perfect life was at those
moments ; everyone must know, everyone who
was looking must know that life was perfectly
happy. That is why people went to church ;
for those moments with the light on all those
things in the chancel. It meant something. . . .
Priests and nuns knew it all the time ; even when
they were unhappy ; that was why they could
kiss dying people and lepers ; they saw something
else, all the time. Nothing common or unclean.
That was why Christ had blazing eyes. Chris-
tianity : the sanctification of bread and wine, and
lepers and death ; the body ; the resurrection of
the body. Even if there was some confusion and
squabbling about Christ there must be something
in it if the things that showed were so beautiful.

HONEYCOMB 71

Hard cold vows, of chastity and poverty. That
did it. Emptiness, in face of — an unspeakable
glory. If one could not, was too weak or proud,
" Verily they have their reward." Everyone got
something somehow ... in hell ; thou art there also
. . . that shows there is no eternal punishment.
Earth is hell, with everyone going to heaven.

What was the worldly life ? The gay bright
shimmering lunch, the many guests, the glitter
of the table, mayonnaise red and green and yellow,
delicate bright wines ; strolling in the woods in
the afternoon. . . . Tea, everyone telling anec-
dotes of the afternoon's walk as if it were a sort
of competition, great bursts of laughter and
abrupt silences and then another story, the
moments of laughter were something like those
moments in church ; whilst there was nothing
but laughter in the room everybody was per-
fectly happy and good ; everybody forgot every-
thing and ran back somewhere ; to the beginning,
to the time when they were first looking at things,
without troubling about anything. But when
the laughter ceased everyone ran away and the
rest of their day together showed in a flash, an
awful tunnel that would be filled with the echo of
the separate footsteps unless more laughter could

72 HONEYCOMB

be made, to hide the sad helpless sounds. Dinners
were like all the noise and laughter of tea-time
grown steadier, a pillow fight with harder whacks
and more time for the strokes, no bitterness, just
buffeting and shouts, and everyone laughing the
same laugh as if they were all in some high secret.
They were in some high secret ; the great secret
of the worldly life ; and if you prevented your-
self from thinking and laughed, they seemed to
take you in. That was the way to live the worldly
life. To talk absurdly and laugh ; to be lost in
laughter. Why had Mrs. Corrie seemed so
vexed ? Why had she said suddenly and quietly
in the billiard^room that it seemed rummy to go
to Mass and play billiards in the evening ? " Be
goody if you are" It had spoiled the day. Mrs.
Corrie would like her to be goody. But then it
was she who had pushed her down the steps in
the afternoon and called after the actor to take
care of her in the woods.

There was something too sad about the worldli-
ness and too difficult about goodness.

Perhaps one had not gone far enough with
worldliness. . . .

" Take each fair mask for what it shows itself,
Nor strive to look beneath it,"

HONEYCOMB 73

That was what she had done drifting about in
the wood with the actor listening to his pleasant
voice. It was an excursion into pure worldliness.
He had never thought for a moment in his life
of the world as anything than what it appeared
to be. He had no suspicion that anyone ever did.
He had accepted her as one of the house-party
and talked, on and on busily, about his American
tour and his hope of a London engagement,
getting emphatic about his chance, the chanciness
of everything. And she had drifted along,
delighting in the pleasant voice sounding through
the wood, seeing the wood clear and steady
through the pleasant tone, not caring about
chance or chanciness but ready to pretend she
was interested in them so that the voice might
go on ; pretending to be interested when he
stopped. That was feminine worldliness, pre-
tending to be interested so that pleasant things
might go on. Masculine worldliness was refusing
to be interested so that it might go on doing
things. Feminine worldliness then meant per-
petual hard work and cheating and pretence at
the door of a hidden garden, a lovely hidden
garden. Masculine worldliness meant never
being really there ; always talking about things

74 HONEYCOMB

that had happened or making plans for things
that might happen. There was nothing that
could happen that was not in some way the same
as anything else. Nobody was ever quite there,
realising.

CHAPTER IV

i

DURING her second week of giving the
children their morning's lessons Miriam
saw finally that it was impossible and would
always be impossible to make their two hours of
application anything but an irrelevant interval
in their lives. They came into the schoolroom
with languid reluctance, dreamily indolent from
breakfast in bed, fragrant from warm baths.
They made no resistance. She sat with the
appointed tasks clearly in mind, holding on to
the certainty that they were to be done as the
only means of getting through the morning.
The excitement of taking up everything afresh
with her was over and beyond occasional moments
of brightness when she tried to impress a fact or
lift them over a difficulty with a jest and they
would exchange their glance of secret delight,
their curious conspirators' glance of some great
certainty shared, they went through their tasks
with well-bred preoccupation, sighing deeply

75

76 HONEYCOMB

now and again and sometimes groaning, with
clenched hands pressed between their knees.
Their accustomed life of events was close round
them, in the garden just beyond the undraped
window, on the mat outside the schoolroom door,
where at any moment a footstep crossing the
landing might fall softly and pause, when their
heads would go up in tense listening. " Rollo ! "
they would say, waiting for the turning of the
handle, holding themselves in for the subdued
shoutings they would utter when Mrs. Corrie
appeared standing in the doorway with a finger
on her lips. " Happy ? " she would breathe ;
" working like nigger boys I " Unless Miriam
looked gravely detached she would glide in
blushing, and passionately caress them. When
this happened, sighs and groanings filled the time
that remained. Their nearest approach to open
rebellion included a tacit appeal to her as a fellow-
sufferer to throw up the stupid game. It was
quite clear that they did not blame her for their
sufferings and they were so much prepared to do
the decent thing that her experiment of reading
to them regularly at some convenient half-hour
each day from a book of adventures or fairy tale,
not only reconciled them to endure the morning's

HONEYCOMB 77

ordeal, but filled them with a gratitude that
astonished her and the beginnings of a personal
regard for her that shook her heart. During the
readings they would lose their air of well-bred
detachment and would come near. They would
be relaxed and silent ; the girl with bent head
and brooding defiant curiously smiling and frown-
ing face, the boy gazing at the reader, rapturous.
She would sometimes feel against each arm the
pressure of a head.

She had felt instinctively and at once that she
could not use their lesson hours as opportunities
for talking at large on general ideas as she had
done with the children in the Banbury Park
school. Those children, the children of trades-
men most of them, could be allowed to take up
the beginnings of ideas ; " ideals," the sense of
modern reforms, they could be allowed to discuss
anything from any point of view and take up
attitudes and have opinions. The opportunity
for discussion and for encouraging a definite
attitude towards life was much greater in this
quiet room with only the two children ; but it
would have been mean, Miriam felt, to take
advantage of this opportunity ; to be anything
but strictly neutral and wary of generalisations.

78 HONEYCOMB

It would have been so easy. Probably a really
" conscientious " woman would have done it,
have " influenced " them, given the girl a bias
in the direction of some life of devotion, hospital
nursing or slum missionary work, and have filled
the boy with ideas as to the essential superiority
of " Radicals." Their minds were so soft and
untouched. ... It ended in a conspiracy, they
all sat masquerading, and finished their morning
exhausted and relieved. The children knew the
lessons tortured her and made her ill at ease, and
they were puzzled without disapproving. Through
it all she felt their gratitude to her for not being
" simple," like Bunnikin.

There was to be another week-end. Again
there would be the sense of being a visitor
amongst other visitors ; visitor was not the word ;
there was a French word which described the
thing, " convive," " les convives " . . . people
sitting easily about a table with flushed faces . . .
someone standing drunkenly up with eyes blazing
with friendliness and a raised wineglass . . .
women and wine, the roses of Heliogabalus ; but
he was a Greek and dreadful in some way >

HONEYCOMB 79

convives were Latin, Roman ; fountains, water
flowing over marble, white- robed strong- faced
people reclining on marble couches, feasting . . .
taking each fair mask for what it shows itself ;
that was what this kind of wealthy English people
did, perhaps what all wealthy people did . . .
the maimed, the halt, the blind, compel them to
come in ... but that was after the others had
refused. The thing that made you feel j oiliest
and strongest was to forget the maimed, to be
a fair mask, to keep everything else out and be a
little circle of people knowing that everything
was kept out. Suppose a skeleton walked in ?
Offer it a glass of wine. People have no right to
be skeletons, or if they are to make a fuss about
it. These people would be all the brighter if
they happened to have neuralgia ; some strong
pain or emotion made you able to do things.
Taking each fair mask was a fine grown-up game.
Perhaps it could be kept up to the end ? Perhaps
that was the meaning of the man playing cards
on his death-bed. Defying God. That was
what Satan did. He was brave ; defying a
tyrant ..." nothing to do but curse God and
die." Who said that ? there was something
silly about it ; giving in, not real defiance. It

8o HONEYCOMB

didn't settle anything ; if the new ideas were
true ; the thing went on. The love of God was
like the love of a mother ; always forgiving you,
ready to die for you, always waiting for you to be
good. Why ? It was mean. The things one
wanted one could not have if one were just tame
and good. ... It is morbid to think about being
good ; better the fair mask — anything. But it
did not make people happy. These people were
not happy. They were not real.

3

Spring ; everywhere, inside and outside the
house. The spring outside had a meaning here.
It came in through the windows without obstruc-
tion and passed into everything. At home it
had sent one nearly mad with joy and anticipa-
tion and passed and left you looking for it for
the rest of the year ; in Germany it had brought
music and wild joy — -the secret had passed from
eye to eye ; all the girls had known it. At
Wordsworth House it had stood far away, like a
picture in a dream, something that could be
seen from windows, and found for a moment in
the park, but powerless to get into the house.
Here it came in ; you could not forget it for a

HONEYCOMB 81

moment ; and it was a background for something
more wonderful than itself ; something that
made it wonderful ; something there were no
words for ; voices, movements from room to
room, strange food, the soft chink of Venetian
glass, amber wine, the light drowned in wine,
through the window a sharp gleam on things
that reflected, day and night, into everything,
even into one's thoughts. Why was the spring
suddenly so real ? Why was it that you could
stand as it were in a shaft of it all the time,
feeling in your breathing, hearing in your voice
the sound of the spring, the blood in your finger-
tips seeming like the roses that they would touch
soon in the garden ?

How ignorant the man was who said, " each
fair mask for what it shows itself." Life is not a
mask, it is fair ; the gold in one's hair is real.

4

Friday brought an atmosphere of expectation.
Mr. Kronen, an old friend of the Corries, was
coming down, with a new Mrs. Kronen.

By the early afternoon the house was full of
fragrance ; coming downstairs dressed for an
errand in the little town two miles away, Miriam

82 HONEYCOMB

saw the hall all pink and saffron with azaleas.
Coming across the hall she found a scent in the
air that did not come from the azaleas, a sweet
familiar syrupy distillation . . . the blaze of
childhood's garden was round her again, bright
magic flowers in the sunlight, magic flowers,
still there, nearer to her than ever in this happy
house ; she could almost hear the humming of
the bees, and flung back the bead curtain with
unseeing eyes half expecting some doorway to
open on the remembered garden ; the scent was
overpowering . . . the drawing-room was cool
and silent with closed windows and drawn blinds ;
bowls of roses stood in every available place ; she
tiptoed about in the room gathering their scent.

As she opened the hall door Mrs. Corrie's
voice startled her from the dining-room.

Going into the dining-room she found her with
a flushed face and excited eyes and the children
dancing round her. " Another tin ! One more
tin ! " they exclaimed, plucking at Miriam.
From the billiard-room came the smell of fresh
varnish. Wiggerson was on her knees near the
door.

" She's done some stupid thing," thought
Miriam, looking at Mrs. Corrie's excited, un-

HONEYCOMB 83

conscious face with sudden anxiety ; " some
womanish overdoing it, wanting to do too much
and spoiling everything." She felt as if she were
representing Mr. Corrie.

" Will it be dry in time ? " she asked, half
angrily, scarcely knowing what she said and in
the midst of Mrs. Corrie's apologetic petition
that she would bring a tin of oak stain back with
her.

" Lordy, don't you think so ? " whispered Mrs.
Corrie, only half dismayed.

Miriam had not patience to follow her as she
went to survey the floor ruefully chanting, " Oh,
Wiggerson, Wiggerson."

" Anyhow I'm sure it oughtn't to have any
more on as late as when I come back," she scolded
boldly. How annoyed Mr. Corrie would be. ...

5

As she was going down the quiet road past the
high oak garden palings of the nearest house she
heard the bumping and scrabbling of a heavy
body against the palings and a dog leapt into the
road almost at her feet, making the dust fly. It
was an Irish terrier. It smiled and barked a
little, waiting, looking up into her face and up

84 HONEYCOMB

and down the road. " It thought it knew me,"
she pondered^.;", "»it mistook me for someone else."
She patted its head and went forward thinking
of the joyful scrabbling, its headlong determina-
tion. The dog jerked back its head with a wide
smile, tore down the road and came back leaping
and smiling. Something disappeared from the
vista of the roadway as the dog rushed along it
nosing after scents, looking round now and again,
and now and again rushing back to greet her. It
brought back the sense of the house and the
strange gay life she had just left to go on her
errand to the little unknown town. It wore a
smart collar ; it belonged to that life. People
in it were never alone ; when they went out
there was always a dog with them. " It thinks
I'm one of them." But it liked the wild ; when
they came out on to the common it rushed up a
sandy pathway and disappeared amongst the
gorse bushes. For a while Miriam hoped it would
come back and kept looking about for it ; then
she gave it up and went ahead with the commons
drifting slowly by on either side ; she wished
that the action of walking were not so jerky, that
the expanses on either side might pass more
smoothly and easily by : " that's why people

HONEYCOMB 85

drive," she thought ; " you can only really see
the country when you are not moving yourself."
Standing still for a moment she looked across the
open stretch to her left and smiled at it and went
on again, walking more quickly ; the soft beauty
that had retreated to the horizon when the dog
was with her was spreading back again across the
whole expanse and coming towards her ; she
hurried on singing softly at random, " Scorn
such a foe . . . though I could fell thee at a
blow, though I-i, cou-uld fe-ell thee-ee a-at a-a
blow "... people walking and thinking and
fussing, people driving somewhere in victorias
were always coming along the road, to them it
was a sort of suburb, quite ordinary, the bit near
home. But it was big enough to be full of waves
and waves of something real, something cool and
true and unchanging. Had anybody seen it, did
the people who lived there know it ? Did any-
body know this strange thing ? She almost ran ;
my " commons," she said. " I know how beauti-
ful you are ; if only I knew whether you know
that I know. I know, I know," she said, " I
shan't forget you." " True, true till death ;
bear it, oh wind, on thy lightning breath."

86 HONEYCOMB

6

The sun was very warm ; before she reached
the end of the long road the sandy pathways were
beginning to glare. There was the river and the
little bridge and the first shop just beyond it,
where her purchase was to be made. Its wood-
work was very bright white ; it had a seaside
look. She stood still on the slight ascent of the
bridge mopping her face and preparing to repre-
sent Mrs. Corrie in the shop. Scrambling up the
shallow bank from the common came the yellow
dog. " Oh, hooray — you duck," she breathed,
patting the warm stubbly head and listening to
his breathless snortings. A piano-organ broke
into loud music in the little street. It was not a
mysterious little town, there was nothing of the
village about it. The white framed windows
held things you would see in a Regent Street
confectioner's ; it was a special shop for the kind
of people who lived here. Miriam felt for her
three and six and asked for her pound of coffee
creams with a bored air, wishing she knew the
dog's name so that she could claim him familiarly.
She contented herself with telling him to lie
a own in an angry whisper repeatedly, as the

HONEYCOMB 87

creams were being weighed. He stood panting
and gazing at her wagging his stump. " 'Ullo,
Bushy," said the shopwoman languidly ; the
dog faced round panting more loudly. " There
you are, Bush," she said, as the scales balanced,
and flung the dog a chocolate wafer which he
caught with a snap. Miriam gazed vaguely at
the unfamiliar spectacle, angrily feeling that the
shopwoman was observing her. " You're not
going to take him through the town ? " said the
shopwoman severely.

" Oh, no," said Miriam nervously.

" He's the worst fighter in the parish ; they
never bring him into the town unless it's the
groom sometimes."

" Thank you," said Miriam, taking her bag of
coffee creams. " Dogs are a nuisance, aren't
they ? " she added, in an emphatically sym-
pathetic tone, getting away through the swing
door almost hating the yellow body that squeezed
through at her side and stood eagerly facing
towards the market-place waiting for her move-
ments.

7

She hurried up over the bridge calling to the
dog without looking round, listening fearfully

88 HONEYCOMB

for sounds of conflict with a brown collie she had
caught sight of standing with head high and ears
pricked, twenty yards down the street. The
piano-organ jingled angrily. The dog came
thoughtfully trotting over the bridge and ambled
off across the common — safe. He might have
been killed, or killed another dog ; how cruel
dogs were, without knowing better. She looked
to the common asking consolation for her beating
heart. The bag of creams was safe and heavy in
her hand, the dog had gone, the little town was
behind, it had hurt her ; it was spoiled ; she
would never like it. It had done nothing but
remind her that she was a helpless dingy little
governess. She toiled along, feeling dreadfully
tired ; the sounds of her boot soles on the firm,
sand-powdered road mocked her, telling her she
must go on. If she could be quite sure of finding
a kind woman, not a hard-featured woman with
black and grey hair, like the shopwoman, but kind,
knowing and understanding everything, in a large
print apron with her sleeves rolled up to the
elbows, living in a large cottage with a family,
who would look at her and smile a quiet short
certain smile, as if she had been waiting for her,
and take her in and let her help and stay there

HONEYCOMB 89

for ever, she would put down the bag of coffee
creams on the edge of the common and go
straight across it to her ; but there would not be
a woman like that here ; all that the women
round here would think about her would be to
wonder which of the families she belonged to.
If a victoria came along and in it a delicate,
lonely old gentleman who had a large empty
house with deep quiet rooms and a large sunny
garden with high walls and wanted someone to
be about there singing and happy till he died she
would go. He would drive away with her and
shut her up in the quiet beautiful house, protect-
ing her and keeping people off, and she would
sing all day in the garden and the house and play
to him and read sometimes aloud, and he would
forget he was old and ill, and they would share
the great secret, dying of happiness. Die of
happiness. People ought to be able to die of
happiness if they were able to admit how happy
they were. If they admitted it aloud they would
pass straight out of their bodies, alive ; un-
happiness was the same as death, not suffering ;
but letting suffering make you unhappy — curse
God and die, curse life, that was letting life beat
you ; letting God beat you. God did not want

90 HONEYCOMB

that. No one admitted it. No one seemed to
know anything about it. People just went on
fussing.

The violent beating of her heart died down.
The sun was behind her ; the commons glowed.
She must have been looking at them for some
time because she could close her eyes and see
exactly how they looked, all alive in steady colour,
gleaming and fresh. The thumping and trilling
of the distant piano-organ offered itself equally
to everybody. It knew the secret and twirled
and swept all the fussing away into a tune.
Quietly the clock of the church in the little town
struck four. She would be late for tea. The
children would have tea with Mrs. Corrie.
Wiggerson would make a fresh pot for her when
she got in. There would be a little tray in her
quiet room, a cup and saucer, the little sprigged
silk tea-cosy, the " Human Document." It would
be the beginning of the week-end. It would link
her up again with the early afternoon, the rose-
filled drawing-room, the excited dining-room,
the smell of varnish from the billiard-room
floor.

HONEYCOMB 91

8

Mrs. Corrie and the children were dancing in
a lingering patch of sunlight at the far end of the
lawn as Miriam came up the drive with her
chocolates. They waved and shouted to her,
trumpeting questions through their hands. She
held up the bag. " Go and have tea, you poor
soul," sang Mrs. Corrie. How excited they were.
In the flower-filled hall Stokes, muttering ex-
citedly to herself, was lighting the fire. The
crackling of wood came from the dining-room.

Wiggerson was swishing about in the dining-
room clearing away tea.

9

Sitting in her low basket chair with her dis-
mantled tea-tray at her side and a picture in her
mind of the new Mrs. Kronen coming down
from London in the train in bright new clothes
and a dust-cloak, Miriam was startled by hearing
frightened footsteps rush across the landing and
a frightened voice calling for Wiggerson.

" Something's happened," she told herself
angrily, " it always does when everybody's so
excited—' tel qui rit vendredi dimanche pleurera.' '

92 HONEYCOMB

Opening the door she found the landing
empty and quiet, the setting sun streamed across
its coloured spaces, the flowers blazed as if they
were standing in a garden. . . . Joey always
went for walks if she were feeling thick and fat,
she always went for a long walk ; in coats with
skirts to match ; a costume ; never a jacket with
a different skirt . . . the long cool passage
leading away to the invisible door of Mr. Corrie's
room was full of wreathing smoke. Wiggerson
rushed across the landing along the passage,
followed by Mrs. Corrie, with her head up and
her handkerchief to her nose and all her figure
tense and angular and strong. Both had passed
silently ; but there were shriekings on the stairs
and the children came at Miriam with cries and
screams. " Rollo'll be killed " ; " Go to her " ;
" Go and save vem " ; the children shrieked
and leaped up and down in front of her. The
boy's white features worked as if they must
dislocate ; his eyes were black with terror ; he
wrung his hands. Sybil's face, scarlet and shape-
less and streaming with tears, blazed wrath at
Miriam through her green eyes. " Be quiet,"
Miriam said in loud tones. " I shall do nothing
till you are quiet." With a shriek the girl lashed

HONEYCOMB 93

at her with the dog- whip. " Save vem, save
vem," shrieked the boy, twisting his arms in the
air. " Will you both be quiet instantly ? "
shouted Miriam, as the blood rose to her head,
catching and holding the boy. Both children
howled and choked ; Sybil flung herself forward
howling, and Miriam felt her teeth in her wrist.
The smoke came pouring out of the little hidden
room, coiling itself against the air of the passage
like some fascinating silent inevitable grimace.
Wiggerson's figure flying through it stirred it
strangely, but it closed behind her and billowed
horribly out towards Mrs. Corrie standing just
clear of its advance with her handkerchief
pressed to her face, quiet, not calling to Wigger-
son, waiting where she had disappeared. Miriam
could not move. Sybil's body hung fastened to
her own with entwining limbs ..." a fight in
the jungle," a tiger flung fixed like a leech against
the breast of a screaming elephant . . ". the boy
had the whip and was slashing at her legs through
her thin dress and uttering piercing shrieks.

10

" Stokes is an idjut," said Mrs. Corrie, going
gaily downstairs with the two exhausted white-

94 HONEYCOMB

faced children followed by Wiggerson flitting
along with bloodshot blinking eyes.

Stokes, sullenly brooding, lighting Mr. Corrie's
fire without putting back the register. What
was it that made Stokes sullen and brooding so
that the accident had happened and the smoke
had come ? Stokes had seen something, someone,
like the fearful oncoming curving stare of the
smoke. Mrs. Corrie and Wiggerson did not
brood like that. They laughed and wept and
snatched things out of danger. They had thin
faces. Mrs. Corrie was alone, like an aspen
shaking its leaves in windless air. She knew she
was alone. Wiggerson . . . Wiggerson was . . . ?
Making her toilet in the spring sunset Miriam
saw all that time Wiggerson's tall body hurtling
about in her small pantry, quickly selecting and
packing things on a tray — her eyes glancing
swiftly downwards as her foot caught, the swift
bending of her body, the rip, rip as she tore the
braiding from her skirt, her intent face as she
threw it from her and swept sinuously upright,
her undisturbed hands once more at their swift
work.

HONEYCOMB 95

ii

What a strange photograph ... a woman in
Grecian drapery seated on a stonework chair
with a small harp on her knees, one hand limply
tweaking the strings of her harp ; her head thrown
back, her eyes, hard and bright, staring up into
the sky, " Inspiration " printed in ink on the white
margin under the photograph. It was an
Englishwoman, a large stiff square body, a coil of
carefully crimped hair and a curled fringe, pre-
tending. There were people who would say,
1 What a pretty photograph," and mean it ...
the draperies and the attitude. How easy it was
to take people in, just by acting. Not the real
people. There were real people. Where were
they ? That horrid thing could get itself on to
Mrs. Corrie's drawing-room table and sit there
unbroken. All women were inspired in a way.
It was true enough. But it was a secret. Men
ought not to be told. They must find it out for
themselves. To dress up and try to make it some-
thing to attract somebody. She was not a woman,
she was a woman . . . oh, curse it all. But men
liked actresses. They liked being fooled.

Miriam looked closely at the photograph with

96 HONEYCOMB

hatred in her eyes. Why not the stone steps and
the chair and the sense of sunlight ; sunlit air ?
That would be enough. " You get in the way
of the air, you thing" she muttered, and the
woman's helpless unconscious sandalled feet re-
proached her. Voices were shouting to each
other on the upper landing. It was Mrs. Kronen's
photograph, of course. Miriam moved quickly
away, ashamed of having stared. But it was too
late ; she had done a horrid thing again. She
saw, as if it were in the room with her, the affair
of the taking of the photograph, a cross face
coming down from its pose to argue with the
photographer, and then flung upwards again,
waiting. And she had put or let someone put it,
in a frame, at once on a strange drawing-room
table. Perhaps her husband had put it there.
But if he valued it he would hide and shelter it.
. . . When we meet, she will know I have stared
at her photograph.

Mrs. Kronen came suddenly in with Mrs.
Corrie, talking in a rich deep thick voice that
moved, with large intervals, up and down a long
scale and yet produced a curious effect of toneless
flatness, just as if she were speaking a narrow
nasal Cockney. There was a Cockney sound some-

HONEYCOMB 97

where in her voice. She began at once loudly
praising everything in the room, hardly pausing
when Miriam was introduced to her, and giving
no sign of having seen her. If I were alone with
her, thought Miriam, I should want to say
" 'Ullo, 'ow's yourself ? " and grin. It would be
the only thing one could genuinely do. Mrs.
Corrie almost giggled at the end of each of Mrs.
Kronen's exclamations, but she was very gay and
animated and so was Mr. Corrie when he came in
with Mr. Kronen. They all went in to dinner
talking and laughing loudly. And they went on
laughing and joking and talking loudly against
each other through dinner.

12

Mr. and Mrs. Corrie looked thin and small and
very young. Once or twice they laughed at the
same moment and glanced at each other. Mr.
Corrie's face was flushed. Mr. and Mrs. Kronen
looked like brother and sister — only that she said
South Africa as if it were a phrase in a tragic
recitative from an oratorio and he as if it were
something he had behind him that gave him a
sort of advantage over everyone. It seemed to
be all he had. They had both been in South

98 HONEYCOMB

Africa, travelling in bullock waggons blinded by
the fierce light and choked with sand. It seemed
to linger in the curious brickish look of their
complexions and the hard yellow of their hair.
The talk about South Africa lasted all dinner-
time. It seemed to interest Mr. Corrie. His
eyes gleamed strangely as he talked about I.D.B.'s.
Everybody at the table said, " Illicit dahmond
bah " at least once with a little thrill of the face.
Why was it illicit to buy diamonds ? — strange
people out there in the glare buying gleaming
stones from miners and this curious feeling about
it all round the table, everybody with hot glint-
ing excited eyes — and somebody, some man, a
business man who had handed round diamonds
like chocolates to his friends in his box at the
opera, a Stock Exchange man in a frock-coat
throwing himself into the sea somewhere between
England and South Africa — ah, what a pity,
worried to death, with an excited head. He
wanted diamonds. And when Mr. Corrie handed
Mrs. Kronen a dish of fruit and said, " A banana ?
A bite of a barnato ? " they all laughed, so com-
fortably. Something illicit seemed to creep
into the very pictures and flow over the
walls. The poor man's body falling desperately

HONEYCOMB 99

into the sea. He could not endure his own
excited eyes.

J3

Early on Monday morning Miriam heard Mrs.
Kronen singing in the bathroom. She tried not
to listen and listened. The bold sound had come
in through her open door when Stokes brought
^er breakfast tray. With it had come the smell
of a downstairs breakfast, coffee, a curious fresh,
sustaining odour of ; coffee and freshly frying
rashers. There was coffee on her own tray this
morning and a letter addressed to her in a bold
unknown hand. She sipped her coffee at once
and put the overwhelming letter aside on her
blue coverlet. It was an overweight, something
thrown in on the surface of the tide on which
she had awakened in the soft fresh harmonies of
rose and blue of her curtained room. It could
wait. It had come out of the world for her ;
but she felt independent of it. It did not disturb
her. Its overwhelming quality was in the fact
that she had called it to her out of the world. It
was as if she had herself addressed the large bold
envelope. She left it. Her sipped coffee steered
her into the tide of the downstairs life. There
was breakfast downstairs, steaming coffee and

ioo HONEYCOMB

entree dishes for Mr. Corrie and the Kronens,
and they were all going off by the ea-ly train.

" C'est si bon," sang Mrs. Kronen in a deep
baritone, as Miriam drank her coffee ; " de con-
fon-dre en un, deu-eux bai-sers." She sang it out
through the quiet upstairs rooms, she met with
it the bustle of preparation downstairs. It was a
world she lived in that made her able to carry off
these things without being disturbed by them,
a rosy secret world in which she lived secure. A
richness at the heart of things. She was there.
She possessed it with her large strong brick-red
and a rose-white frame and her strong yellow
hair. Did she, really ? At any rate she wanted
to suggest that she did — that that secret richness
was the heart of things. She flung out boldly
that it was and that she was there, but a sort of
soft horrible slurring flatness in her voice sug-
gested evil, as if a sort of restless acceptance of
something evil was the price of her carelessness.
Perhaps that was how things were. Perhaps that
was part of taking each fair mask for what it
shows itself. She made everyone else seem cloudy
and shrivelled and dim. Miriam took up the
stupendous envelope and held its solid weight in
her hand as Mrs. Kronen sang on. " All right,"

HONEYCOMB 101

she said, and smiled at it, feeling daring and strong.
Its arrival would have been quite different if
Mrs. Kronen had not been there ; this curious
powerful independent morning in the rose-blue
room would not have happened in the same way
without Mrs. Kronen. . . . Live, don't worry.
. . . I've always been worrying and bothering.
I'm going to be like Mrs. Kronen ; but quite
different, because she hasn't the least idea how
beautiful things really are. She doesn't know
that everyone is living a beautiful strange life
that has never been lived before. If she did she
would not be ashamed of herself. Miriam gave
a great sigh and smiled.

Her breakfast was a feast. Sitting back under
the softly tinted canopy with the soft folds of
the bed curtains hanging near on either side she
stared at the bright light pouring in through the
lattices. Her room was a great square of happy
light . . . happy, happy. She gathered up all
the sadness she had ever known and flung it from
her. All the dark things of the past flashed with
a strange beauty as she flung them out. The
light had been there all the time ; but she had

102 HONEYCOMB

known it only at moments. Now she knew what
she wanted. Bright mornings, beautiful bright
rooms, a wilderness of beauty all round her all the
time — at any cost. Any life that had not these
things she would refuse. . . . Roses in her blood
and gold in her hair ... it was something
belonging to them, something that made them
gleam. It was her right ; even if they gleamed
only for her. They gleamed, she knew it. Youth,
the glory of youth. So strong. She had got
herself into this beautiful life, found her way to
it ; she would stay in it for ever, work in it, make
money and when she was old, have soft, pink
curtains and fragrant things to remind her, as
long as she could lift her hand. No more ugliness,
no more schools or mean little houses. Luxuries,
beautiful gleaming things ... a secret happy
life.

She smiled securely, with her eyes, the strange
happy smile that had come in the brougham. . . .

IS

How strong Mrs. Kronen was. . . . How
huge and strong she had looked standing in the
hall while Mr. Corrie said cruel laughing little
things about the billiard-room floor. ..." She'll

HONEYCOMB 103

paint Madonna lilies on the table next." . . .
Mrs. Kronen saying nothing, smiling more and
more without moving her face, growing bigger
and stronger and taller as Mr. Corrie grumbled
and Mr. Kronen fidgeted, cross and disappointed
by the hall fire and then suddenly lifting her head
and singing, a great flourish of clear strong notes
filling the hall and pealing up through the house
as she swept into the drawing-room.

Singing song after song to her own loud accom-
paniment, great emphatic sweeps of song, so that
everyone came and sat about in the room listening
and waiting, the men staring at the back of her
head as she sat at the piano. Waiting, for music
— they did not know they were waiting for music,
waiting for her to stop getting between them
and the music. They admired her, her magnifi-
cent singing and waited, unsatisfied, in the
sweetness of the lamp-lit flower-filled room that
her music did not touch. She sang on and on
and they all grew smaller and smaller in the
great sea of sound, more and more hopelessly
waiting.

104 HONEYCOMB

16

And Mrs. Corrie had sat deep in her large chair,
dead and drowned. Dead because of something
she had never known. Dead in ignorance and
living bravely on — her sweet thin voice rising
above the gloom where she lay hid — a gloom
where there were no thoughts. Nearly all women
were like that, living in a gloom where there were
no thoughts. If anyone could persuade her that
she was alive she would do nothing but rush about
and dance and sing . . . how irritating that
would be ... making men smile and trot about
and look silly ... no room for ideas ; except
in smoking-rooms — and — laboratories. . . . She
was a good woman ; a God woman ; the sweet-
ness of her bones and her thin sweet voice of
tears and laughter were of God. Everyone knew
that and worshipped her. Men's ideas were
devilish ; clever and mean. . . . Was God a
woman ? Was God really irritating ? No one
could endure God really. . . . Men could not.
. c . Women were of God in some way. That
is what men could never forgive ; the superiority
of women. .,'-...." Perhaps I can't stand women
because Pm a sort of horrid man."

HONEYCOMB 105

Mrs. Kronen was a sort of man too. She was
not perplexed. But she was a woman too —
because she was not mean and petty and fussy as
men are ... sitting tall and square at the piano
with the square tall form of her husband standing
ready to turn the pages — her strong baritone
voice rolling out, " Ai-me-moi . . . car ton
charm e-est etrange . . . et-je-t'ai-me."

17

Recalling the song as she sat back in the alcove
of her bed motionless, keeping the brightness of
her room at its first intensity, Miriam remembered
that it had brought her a moment when the
flower-filled drawing-room had seemed to be lit,
from within herself, a sudden light that had kept
her very still and made the bowls of roses blaze
with deepening colours. In her mind she had
seen garden beyond garden of roses, sunlit,
brighter and brighter and had made a rapturous
prayer. She remembered the words . . . God.
. . . Pm not afraid of you. Look at the gardens
... and something had smiled through the lit
gardens exultantly, and Mrs. Kronen's voice had
raged through the room like a storm, " Ai-me
moi ! . . ." and Mr. Corrie's eyes were strange

io6

HONEYCOMB

and hard with shadows. . . . He knew, in some
strange way men knew there were gardens
everywhere, not always visible. Women did not
seem to know. . . .

The letter on her tray was a sort of response to
her prayer.

CHAPTER V
i

IT was quite a long letter — signed with a large
" Bob " set crosswise. It began by asking
her advice about a wedding present for Harriett
and ended with the suggestion that she should
meet him and help him to make a suitable selec-
tion. It was written from the British Chess
Club, to her, because Bob Greville wanted to see
her. Harriett's wedding present was only an
excuse. She flung the envelope and the two
sheets of notepaper, spread loose, on her blue
coverlet and smiled into her cup as she finished
her coffee. Old Bob did not know that he had
clad her in armour. He wanted to meet her alone.
They two people were to meet and talk, without
any reason, because they wanted to. But what
could she have to say to anyone who thought
that Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, even a nice
edition bound in calf, or How to be Happy
though Married, suitable for a wedding present
for Harriett, or for anybody ? Still, they might

107

108 HONEYCOMB

write to each other. It was right that letters,
secret letters, should be brought into her blue
room in the morning with her breakfast. She
dropped out of bed smiling and sniffed at the
roses she had worn the day before, standing in a
glass on her washstand, freshened, half faded,
half fresh, intoxicating as she bent over them.
She dressed, without drawing back her curtains,
in the soft rose-blue light, singing Mrs. Kronen's
song in an undertone.

2

At eleven o'clock Mrs. Corrie swept into the
schoolroom. Miriam looked easily up at her
from the dreamy thicket where she and the chil-
dren had spent their hour, united and content,
speaking in undertones, getting easily through
books that had seemed tiresome and indifferent
the day before. She had felt the play of her mind
on theirs and their steady adult response. They
had joined as conspirators in this mad contempt-
ible business of mastering the trick of the text-
book, each dreaming the while his own dream.

" You darlings," cried Mrs. Corrie, " how
sweet you all look ! " They raised drunken eyes
and beamed drowsily at her. " Give them a

HONEYCOMB 109

holiday," said Mrs. Corrie, raising her hands over
the table like a conductor about to start an
orchestra. " Give them a holiday — a picnic —
and come and buy hats ! "

In a moment the room was in an uproar of
capering figures. " Hats ! A new hat for Rollo !
Heaps of cash ! I've got heaps of cash ! "

Miriam blinked from her thicket. This was
anarchy ; she felt herself sliding. But they were
so old. All so old and experienced. She so young,
by so far the youngest of the four.

3

Mrs. Corrie sat back in the victoria, her face
alight under the cream lace veil she had twisted
round her soft winter hat, and talked in quiet
clipped phrases : soft shouts. They were driving
swiftly through the fresh warmth of the April
midday.

They were off for the afternoon. The com-
mons gleamed a prelude. Miriam saw that Mrs.
Corrie did not notice them nor think of sweeping
back across them later on through the afternoon
air and seeing them move and gleam in the after-
noon light. She did not think of the bright
shops, the strangely dyed artificial flowers with

no HONEYCOMB

their curious fascinating smell interwoven with
the strange warm smell of velvet and chenille
and straw. . . . Miriam had once bought a hat
in a shop in Kensington. As long as it lasted it
had kept for her whenever she looked at its
softly dyed curiously plaited straw something of
the exciting fascination of the shop, the curious
faint flat odours of millinery, the peculiar dim
warm smell of silks and velvets — silk, China and
Japan, silkworms weaving shining threads in the
dark. Even when it had become associated with
outings and events and shabby with exposure it
remained each time she took it afresh from its
box of wrappings, a mysterious sacred thing ;
and the soft blending of its colours, the coiled
restraint of its shape, the texture of its snuggled
trimmings were a support, refreshing her thoughts.
She had never known anyone who went regularly
to good hatshops ; the sense of them as a part of
life was linked only with Mrs. Kronen — Mrs.
Kronen's little close toque made of delicately
shaded velvet violets and lined with satin, her
silky peacock blue straw shining with rich filmy
tones, its mass of dull shot blue-green ribbon
and the soft rose pink of its velvet roses. These
hats had excited Mrs. Corrie ; the hats and the

HONEYCOMB in

sand - coloured silk dust cloak explained her
cheque and her sudden happiness. But they
only made her want to buy hats. The going and
the shops were nothing to her. She talked about
the Kronens as they drove, speaking as though
she wanted Miriam to hear without answering.
" She knows Mrs. Kronen fascinates me," thought
Miriam.

" Ain't they a pair, lordy . . . him divorced
and her divorced and then marryin' each other.
Ain't it scandalous, eh ? "

People like the Corries disapproved of people
like the Kronens, but had them to stay with them
and were excited about their clothes. Miriam
returned to listen to the singing of her body ;
it would sing until they got to the station. As
she listened she held firmly clasped the letter she
had addressed to the British Chess Club to say
she would be nowhere near London until the
weddings. " She doesn't care a rap about him —
not • teeny rap . . . she's a wise lady . . .
dolla ; — that's the thing," whispered Mrs. Corrie
gaily What does she want me to say? thought
Miriam. What would she say if I pretended
to agree ?

Should she tell her about the weddings?

ii2 HONEYCOMB

Perhaps not. It would be time enough, she re-
flected rapidly, when she had to ask permission
to go home for them. Mrs. Corrie had not
asked her a single question about things at home,
and if she were to say, " We used to live in a big
house and my father lost nearly all his money
and we live now in a tiny villa and two of my
sisters are to be married," it would break into
this strange easy new life. It would break the
charm and not bring her any nearer to Mrs.
Corrie. And Mrs. Corrie would not really
understand about the home troubles. Mrs.
Corrie had always been lonely and sad, inside.
She had been an orphan, but brought up by a
wealthy uncle and always living in wealth and
now she seemed to think about nothing but the
children and the house and the garden — hating
theatres and dances and never going to them or
paying visits or seeing the wonder of anything.
She would only say, " Don't you marry yourself
off, young lady, marriage is a fraud. You wait
for a wealthy one." Whatever one said to her,
whatever joy one showed her would lead to that.
But the two weddings hovered about the
commons. They were a great possession. No-
thing to worry about in them. Gerald and

HONEYCOMB 113

Bennett who had managed everything since the
smash would manage them. Sarah and Harriet
would be married from the little villa and would
be Mrs. Brodie and Mrs. Ducayne just like
anybody else. So safe. And she herself, free,
getting interesting letters, going up to town
with Mrs. Corrie, no worry, spring hats and the
commons and garden waiting for them. She was
sure she did not want to see the commons over-
burdened by the idea of her own wedding. Two
was enough for the present. Of course, some
day — someone, somewhere, wonderful and differ-
ent from everyone else. Cash — no, not business
and cigars and offices . . . the city, horrible
bloated men with shapeless figures, horrible
chemists' shops advertising pick-me-ups ... a
cottage — a cottage. Why did people laugh at
love in a cottage ? The outsides of cottages were
the best part, everyone said. They were dark
inside ; but why not ? A lamp ; and outside
the garden and the light.

" She's had all kinds of operations," mused
Mrs. Corrie.

" Really ? "

" Deadly awful. In nursing homes. She'll
never have any kiddies,"
i

ii4 HONEYCOMB

Were there cold shadows on everything, every-
where ?

She turned a pleading face to Mrs. Corrie.
They were driving into the station yard.

" It's true, true, true," laughed Mrs. Corrie.
" She doesn't care, she doesn't want any. They're
all like that, that sort."

Miriam mused intensely. She felt Mrs. Kronen
ought to be there to answer. She had some
secret Mrs. Corrie did not possess. Mrs. Corrie
looked suddenly small and mild and funny.
Why did she think it dreadful that Mrs. Kronen
should have no children ? There was nothing
wonderful in having children. It was better to
sing. She was perfectly sure that she herself did
not want children. . . . " Superior women don't
marry," she said, " sir she said, sir she said,
su, per, *, or women" — but that meant blue
stockings.

4

" I don't want a silly hat," said Mrs. Corrie,
as their hansom drew up in bright sunlight out-
side a milliner's at the southern end of Regent
Street. " Let's buy a real lovely teapot or a
Bartolozzi or somethin'. What fun to go home
with somethin' real nice. Eh ? A real real

HONEYCOMB 115

beauty Dresden teapot," she chanted, floating
into the dimness of the shop where large hats
standing on long straight stands flared softly
like blossoms in the twilight.

She swept about in her flowing lace-trimmed
twine-coloured overcoat on the green velvet
carpet, or stood ruthlessly trying on a hat,
pressing its wire frame to fit her head, crushing
her fingers into tucked tulle, talking and trying,
and discarding until the collection was exhausted.
Miriam sat angry and admiring, wondering at the
subdued helplessness of the satin-clad assistant,
sorry for the discarded hats lying carelessly about,
their glory dimmed. All the hats, whatever
their shape or colour seemed to her to decorate
the bronze head and the twine-coloured coat.
The little toques gave slenderness and willowy
height, and the large flowered ribboned hats, the
moment a veil draped the boniness of the face
made, Miriam felt, an entrancing picturesqueness.
With each hat Mrs. Corrie addressed the large
mirror calling herself a freak, a sketch, a night-
mare, a real real fogey.

ii6 HONEYCOMB

5

The process seemed endless and Miriam sat at
last scourging herself with angry questions
' Why doesn't she decide," she found herself
repeating almost aloud, her hot tired eyes turn-
ing for relief to the soft guipure-edged tussore
curtain screening the lower part of the window,
" what kind of hat she really wants and then
look at the few most like it and perhaps have one
altered ? . . ." " It's so awfully silly not to have
a plan. She'll go on simply for ever." But the
soft curtain running so evenly along its smooth
clean brass rod was restful, and plan or no plan
the trouble would presently come to an end and
there would be no discomforts to face when it
was over — no vulgar bun shops, no struggling
on to a penny 'bus with your ride perhaps spoiled
by a dreadful neighbour, but Regent Street in
the bright sun, a hansom, a smart obliging driver
with a buttonhole, skimming along to tea some-
where, the first-class journey home, the carriage
at the station, the green commons.

" Perhaps," said the assistant at last in a
cheerful suggestive furious voice, flinging aside
with just Mrs. Corrie's cheerful abandon, a large

HONEYCOMB 117

cream lace hat with a soft fresh mass of tiny
banksia roses under, its left brim, "Perhaps
moddom will allow me to make her a shape and
trim it to her own design."

Mrs. Corrie stood arrested in the middle of
the green velvet floor. Wearily Miriam faced
the possibility of the development of this fresh
opportunity for going on for ever.

" Wouldn't that be lovely ? " said Mrs. Corrie,
turning to her enthusiastically.

" Yes," said Miriam eagerly. Both women
were facing her and she felt that anything would
be better than their united contemplation of her
brown stuff dress with its square sleeves and her
brown straw hat with black ribbon and its yellow
paper buttercups.

" Can't be did though," said Mrs. Corrie in a
cold level voice, turning swiftly back to the hats
massed in a confused heap on the mahogany slab.
Standing over them and tweaking at one and
another as she spoke she made a quiet little speech,
indicating that such and such might do for the
garden and such others for driving, some dozen
altogether she finally ordered to be sent at once
to an address in Brook Street where she would
make her final selection whilst the messenger

ii8 HONEYCOMB

waited. " Have you got the address all right ? ':
she wound up ; " so kind of you." " Come
along, you poor thing you look worn out," she
cried to Miriam, without looking at her as she
swept from the shop. She waved her sunshade
at a passing hansom and as it drew sharply up
with an exciting clatter near the curb she grasped
Miriam's arm, " Shall we try Perrin's ? It's
only three doors up." Miriam glanced along and
caught a glimpse of another hat shop. " Do you
really want to ? ': she suggested reluctantly.
" No ! No ! not a bit old spoil sport. Chum
yong, jump in," laughed Mrs. Corrie.

" Oh, if you really want to," began Miriam,
but Mrs. Corrie, singing out the address to the
driver was putting her into the cab and showing
her how to make an easy passage for the one who
gets last into a hansom by slipping into the near
corner. Her appreciation of this little manoeuvre
helped her over her contrition and she responded
with gay insincerity to Mrs. Corrie's assurance
of the fun they would have over the hats at Mrs.
Kronen's. . . . Tea at Mrs. Kronen's then.
How strange and alarming . . . but she felt too
tired to sustain a the-a-tete at a smart tea shop.
" After tea we'll drop into a china shop and get

HONEYCOMB 119

somethin' real nice," said Mrs. Corrie excitedly,
as they bowled up Regent Street.

They found Mrs. Kronen in a mauve and white
drawing-room, reclining on a mauve and white
striped settee in a pale mauve tea gown. On a
large low table a frail mauve tea service stood
ready, and as Mrs. Kronen rose tall to welcome
them dropping on to the mauve carpet a little
volume bound in pale green velvet. On a second
low table were strawberries in a shallow wide
bowl, a squat jug brimming with cream, dark
wedding cake hiding a pewter plate, a silken bag
unloosed, showing marvellous large various sweet-
meats heavy against its silk lining. As Mrs. Kronen
slurred her fingers across Miriam's hand she ordered
the manservant who had dipped and gathered up
the green velvet volume to ask for the tea-cakes.

7

Then this was " Society." To come so easily
up from the Corries' beautiful home, via the
West End hat shop to this wonderful West End
flat and eat strawberries in April. ... If only
the home people could see. Her fatigue vanished.

120 HONEYCOMB

Secure from Mrs. Kronen's notice she sat in a
mauve and white striped chair and contemplated
her surroundings.

While they were waiting for the tea-cakes,
Mrs. Kronen trailed about the mauve floor
reciting her impressions of the weather. " So
lovely," she intoned in her curious half-Cockney.
" I almost — went — out. But I haven't. I —
haven't — stirred. It is lovely inside on this sort
of spring day — the light."

She paused and swept about. There is some-
thing about her, thought Miriam. It's true, the
light inside on a clear spring day. ... I never
thought of that. It is somehow spring in here
in the middle of London in some real way. Her
blood leaped and sang as it had done driving
across the commons ; but even more sweetly
and keenly. It wouldn't be, in a dingy room,
even in the country. . . . It's an essence — some-
thing you feel in the right surroundings. . . .
What chances these people have. They get the
most out of everything. Get everything in
advance and over and over again. They can go
into the country any minute as well as have clear
light rooms. Nothing is ever grubby. And
London there, all round ; London . . . London

HONEYCOMB 121

was a soft, sea-like sound ; a sound shutting in
the spring. The spring gleamed and thrilled
through everything in the pure bright room. . . .
She hoped Mrs. Kronen would say no more about
the light. Light, light, light. As the manservant
brewed the tea and the silver teapot shone in the
light as he moved it — silver and strange black
splashes of light — caught and moving in the
room. Drawing off her gloves she felt as if she
could touch the flowing light. . . . Flowing in
out of the dawn, moving and flowing and brood-
ing and changing all day, in rooms. Mrs. Kronen
was back on her settee sitting upright in her
mauve gown, all strong soft curves. " That play
of Wilde9 s . . ." -she said. Miriam shook at the
name. " You ought not to miss it. He — has —
such — genius" Wilde . . . Wilde ... a play
in the spring — someone named Wilde. Wild
spring. That was genius. There was something
in the name. . . . " Never go to the theatre ;
never, never, never," Mrs. Corrie was saying,
" too much of a bore." Genius . . . genius is
an infinite capacity for taking pains. Capacity.
A silly definition ; like a proverb — made up by
somebody who wanted to explain. . . . Wylde,
Wilde. . . . Spring. . . . Genius.

izz HONEYCOMB

8

The little feast was over and Mrs. Kronen was
puffing at a cigarette when the hats were an-
nounced. As the fine incense reached her Miriam
regretted that she had not confessed to being a
smoker. The suggestion of tobacco brought the
charm of the afternoon to its height. When the
magic of the scented cloud drew her eyes to Mrs.
Kronen's face it was almost intolerable in its
keenness. She gazed wondering whether Mrs.
Kronen felt so nearly wild with happiness as she
did herself. . . . Life what are you — what is
life ? she almost said aloud. The face was up-
lifted as it had been in the photograph, but with
all the colour, the firm bows of gold hair, the
colour in the face and strong white pillar of neck,
the eyes closed instead of staring upwards and
the rather full mouth flattened and drooping
with its weight into a sort of tragic shapeliness —
like some martyr . . . that picture by Rossetti,
Beata Beatrix, thought Miriam . . . perfect
reality. She liked Mrs. Kronen for smoking like
that. She was not doing it for show. She would
have smoked in the same way if she had been alone.
She probably wished she was, as Mrs. Corrie did

HONEYCOMB 123

not smoke. How she must have hated missing
her smokes at Newlands, unless she had smoked
in her room.

" It's — a — mis-take," said Mrs. Kronen in-
credulously, in response to the man's announce-
ment of the arrival of the hats. She waved her
cigarette " imperiously," thought Miriam, " how
she enjoys showing off "... to and fro in time
with her words. Mrs. Corrie rose laughing and
explaining and apologising. Waving her cigar-
ette about once more Mrs. Kronen ordered the
hats to be brought in and her maid to be sum-
moned, but retained her expression of vexed
incredulity. She's simply longing for us to be
off now, thought Miriam, and changed her
opinion a few moments later when Mrs. Kronen,
assuming on the settee the reclining position in
which they had found her when they came in,
disposed one by one of the hats as Mrs. Corrie
and the maid freed them from their boxes and
wrappings, with a little flourish of the cigarette
and a few slow words. ..." Im-poss-i-ble ;
not-in-key-with-your-lines ; slightly too ingenue"
etc. : to three or four she gave a grudging
approval, whereupon Mrs. Corrie who was
laughing and pouncing from box to box would

i24 HONEYCOMB

stand upright and pace holding the favoured hat
rakishly on her head. The selection was soon
made and Miriam, whose weariness had returned
with the millinery, was sent off to instruct the
messenger that three hats had been selected and
a bill might be sent to Brook Street in the morn-
ing.

As she was treating with the. messenger in the
little mauve and white hall, Mrs. Corrie came
out and tapped her on the shoulder. Turning,
Miriam found her smiling and mysterious.
c We're going by the 5.30," she whispered.
" Would you like to go for a walk for half an hour
and come back here ? "

" Rather / " said Miriam heartily, with a
break in her voice and feeling utterly crushed.
The beautiful clear room. She loved it and be-
longed to it. She was turned out. " All right,"
smiled Mrs. Corrie encouragingly and disappeared.
Under the eyes of the messenger and the servants
who were coming out of the boudoir laden with
hat boxes, she got herself out through the door.

CHAPTER VI

i

THE West End street . . . grey buildings
rising on either side, feeling away into the
approaching distance — angles sharp against the
sky . . . softened angles of buildings against
other buildings . . . high moulded angles soft
as crumb, with deep undershadows . . . creepers
fraying from balconies . . . strips of window
blossoms across the buildings, scarlet, yellow,
high up ; a confusion of lavender and white
pouching out along a dipping sill ... a wash of
green creeper up a white painted house front . . .
patches of shadow and bright light. . . . Sounds
of visible near things streaked and scored with
broken light as they moved, led off into untraced
distant sounds . . . chiming together.

Wide golden streaming Regent Street was quite
near. Some near narrow street would lead into it.

125

126 HONEYCOMB

3

Flags of pavement flowing along — smooth
clean grey squares and oblongs, faintly polished,
shaping and drawing away — sliding into each
other. ... I am part of the dense smooth clean
paving stone . . . sunlit ; gleaming under dark
winter rain ; shining under warm sunlit rain,
sending up a fresh stony smell . . . always there
. . . dark and light . . . dawn, stealing . . .

4

Life streamed up from the close dense stone.
With every footstep she felt she could fly.

5

The little dignified high -built cut -through
street, with its sudden walled-in church, swept
round and opened into brightness and a clamour
of central sounds ringing harshly up into the sky.

6

The pavement of heaven.
To walk along the radiant pavement of sunlit
Regent Street forever.

HONEYCOMB 127

7

She sped along looking at nothing. Shops
passed by, bright endless caverns screened with
glass . . . the bright teeth of a grand piano
running along the edge of its darkness, a cataract
of light pouring down its raised lid; forests of
hats ; dresses, shining against darkness, bright
headless crumpling stalks ; sly, silky, ominous
furs ; metals, cold and clanging, brandishing the
light; close prickling fire of jewels . . . strange
people who bought these things, touched and

bought them.

8

She pulled up sharply in front of a window.
The pavement round it was clear, allowing her
to stand rooted where she had been walking, in
the middle of the pavement, in the midst of the
tide flowing from the clear window, a soft fresh
tide of sunlit colours . . . clear green glass
shelves laden with shapes of fluted glass, glinting
transparencies of mauve and amber and green,
rose-pearl and milky blue, welded to a flowing
tide, freshening and flowing through her blood,
a sea rising and falling with her breathing.

128 HONEYCOMB

9

The edge had gone from the keenness of the
light. The street was a happy, sunny, simple
street — small. She was vast. She could gather
up the buildings in her arms and push them
away, clearing the sky ... a strange darkling
and she would sleep. She felt drowsy, a drowsi-
ness in her brain and limbs and great strength,
and hunger.

A clock told her she had been away from
Brook Street ten minutes. Twenty minutes to
spare. What should she do with her strength ?
Talk to someone or write . . . Bob ; where was
Bob ? Somewhere in the West End. She would
write from the West End a note to him in the

West End.

10

There were no cheap shops in Regent Street.
She looked about. Across the way a little side
street showing a small newspaper shop offered help.

ii

Thoroughly frightened she hurried with
clenched hands down the little mean street ready
to give up her scheme at the first sight of an un-
friendly eye. " We went through those awful

HONEYCOMB 129

side streets off the West End ; I was terrified ;
I didn't know where he was driving us," Mrs.
Poole had said about a cabman driving to the
theatre . . . and her face as she sat in her thick
pink dress by the dining-room fire had been
cunning and mean and full of terror. A small
shop appeared close at hand, there were news-
paper posters propped outside it and its window
was full of fly-blown pipes, toilet requisites,
stationery and odd-looking books. " Letters may
be left here," said a dirty square of cardboard in
the corner of the window. " That's all right,"
thought Miriam, " it's a sort of agency." She
plunged into the gloomy interior. " Yes ! "
shouted a tall stout man with a red coarse face
coming forward, as if she had asked something
that had made him angry. " I want some note-
paper, just a little, the smallest quantity you
have and an envelope," said Miriam, quivering
and panic-stricken in the hostile atmosphere.
The man turned and whisked a small packet off
a shelf, throwing it down on the counter before
her. " One penny ! " bellowed the man as she
took it up. " Oh, thank you," murmured
Miriam ingratiatingly putting down twopence.
" Do you sell pencils ? " The man's great

130 HONEYCOMB

fingers seemed an endless time wrenching a small
metal-sheathed pencil from its card. The street
outside would have closed in and swallowed
her up forever if she did not quickly get
away.

12

" Dear Mr. Greville," she wrote in a clear bold
hand. . . . He won't expect me to have that
kind of handwriting, like his own, but stronger.
He'll admire it on the page and then hear a man's
voice, Pater's voice talking behind it and not like
it. Me. He'd be a little afraid of it. She felt
her hard self standing there as she wrote, and
shifted her feet a little, raising one heel from the
ground, trying to feminise her attitude ; but her
hat was hard against her forehead, her clothes
would not flow. . . . " Just imagine that I am
in town — I could have helped you with your
shopping if I had known I was coming. . . ."
The first page was half filled. She glanced at
her neighbours, a woman on one side and a man
on the other, both bending over telegram forms
in a careless preoccupied way — wealthy, with
expensive clothes with West End lines. . . .
Regent Street was Salviati's. It was Liberty's
and a music shop and the shop with the chickens.

HONEYCOMB 131

But most of all it was Salviati's. She feared the
officials behind the long grating could see by the
expression of her shoulders that she was a scrubby
person who was breaking the rules by using one
of the little compartments with its generosity of
ink and pen and blotting paper, for letter writing.
Someone was standing impatiently just behind
her, waiting for her place. " Telle est la vie,"
she concluded with a flourish, " yours sincerely,"
and addressed the envelope in almost illegible
scrawls. Guiltily she bought a stamp and
dropped the letter with a darkening sense of
guilt into the box. It fell with a little muffled
plop that resounded through her as she hurried
away towards Brook Street. She walked quickly,
to make everything surrounding her move more
quickly. London revelled and clamoured softly
all round her ; she strode her swiftest heighten-
ing its clamorous joy. The West End people,
their clothes, their carriages and hansom, their
clean bright spring-filled houses, their restaurants
and the theatres waiting for them this evening,
their easy way with each other, the mysterious
something behind their faces, was hers. She,
too, now had a mysterious secret face — a West
End life of her own.

CHAPTER VII

I

THE next morning there was a letter from
Bob containing a page of description of
his dull afternoon at his club within half a mile
of her. " Let me know, my dear girl," it went
on, " whenever you escape from your gaolers,
and do not suffer the thought of old Bob's
making himself responsible for all the telegrams
you may send to cloud your joyous young inde-
pendence."

Miriam recoiled from the thought of a dull
bored man looking to her for enlivenment of the
moving coloured wonder of London and felt
that Mr. and Mrs. Corrie were anything but
gaolers. She was not sorry that she had missed
the opportunity of seeing him. " Meanwhile
write and tell me your thoughts," was the only
sentence that had appealed to her in the letter ;
but she was sure she could not whole-heartedly
offer her thoughts as entertainment to a man who
sptent his time feeling dull in a club. He's . . .

132

HONEYCOMB 133

blase, that's it, she reflected. Perhaps it would
be better not to write again. He's not my sort
a bit, she pondered with a sudden dim sense of
his view of her as a dear girl. But she knew she
wanted to retain him to decorate her breakfast
tray with letters.

The following day Mrs. Corrie decided that
she did not want to keep the hats. She would
spend the money intended for them on sketching
lessons. An artist should come once a week and
teach them all to paint from Nature. This
decision excited Miriam deeply, putting every-
thing else out of her mind. It promised the
satisfaction of a desire she had cherished with
bitter hopelessness ever since her schooldays
when every Friday had brought the necessity
of choking down her longing to join the little
crowd of girls who took " extras " and filed
carelessly in to spend a magic afternoon
amongst easels and casts in the large room. The
old longing came leaping back higher than it
had ever done before, making a curious eager
smouldering in her chest — as Mrs. Corrie talked.
An old sketch-book was brought out and Mrs.

134 HONEYCOMB

Corrie spent the morning making drawings of
the heads of the children as they sat at lessons.
The book was almost full of drawings of the
children's heads. Besides the heads there were
rough sketches of people Miriam did not know.
The first half-dozen pages were covered with
small outlines, hands, feet, eyes, thumbs ; a
few lines suggesting a body. These pages seemed
full of life. But the sketches of the children and
the unknown people, sitting posed, in profile,
looking up, looking down, full face, quarter face,
three-quarters, depressed her. Learning to draw
did not seem worth while if this was the result.
The early pages haunted her memory as she sat
over the children's lessons. Feet, strange things
stepping out,, going through the world, running,
dancing ; the silent feet of people sitting in
chairs pondering affairs of state. Eyes, looking
at everything ; looking at the astonishingness of
everything.

3

" That's the half-crown Mrs. Corrie gave me
for the cabman, and the shilling for my tea,"
said Miriam, handing the coins to her companion
as they bowled over Waterloo Bridge. Seagulls
were rising and dipping about the rim of the

HONEYCOMB 135

bridge and the sunlight lay upon the water and
shimmered and flashed along the forms of the
seagulls as they hovered and wheeled in the clear
air. Miriam glanced at them through the little
side window of the hansom with a remote keen
part of her consciousness . . . light flashing
from the moving wing of a seagull, the blue
water, the brilliant sky, the bite of sun-scorched
air upon her cheek, the sound about her like the
sound of the sea. ... As she turned back to the
shaded enclosure of the hansom these things
shrivelled and vanished and left her dumb,
helplessly poised between two worlds. This
shabby part of London and the seaside bridge
could make no terms with the man at her side, his
soft grey suit, his soft grey felt hat, the graceful
crook of his crossed knees, his gleaming spats, the
glitter of the light upon patent leather shoes.
He was gazing out ahead, with the look with
which he had looked across Australia in his gold-
digging days, weary until he got back to the
West End, not talking because the cab made
such a noise crossing the bridge. It was stupid
of her to peer out of her window and get away
to her own world like that. Nothing that we can
ever say to each other can possibly interest us,

136 HONEYCOMB

she reflected. Why am I here ? Her coins re-
assured her.

:c Don't think about pence, dear girl," he said,
in a voice that quavered a little against the noise
of the cab, " when you're with old Bob." With-
out looking at her he gently closed her hand over
the money.

" All right," she shouted, " we'll see, later on ! "

The cab swept round into a street and the
noise abated.

" When we've dropped those famous hats and
rung the bell and run away we'll go on to Bum-
pus's and choose our book," he said, as if asserting
themselves and their errand against the confusion
through which they were driving.

" Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," thought
Miriam, glancing with loathing at the pointed
corner of the collar that stuck out across the
three firm little folds under the clean-shaven
chin. . . . How funny I am. I suppose I shall
get through the afternoon somehow. We shall
go to the bookshop and then have tea and then it
will be time to go back.

" The cabman is to take the hats into the shop
and leave them. Isn't it extraordinary ? "

Bob laughed with a little fling of his head.

HONEYCOMB 137

" The vagaries of the Fair, dear girl," he said
presently, in a soft blurred tone.

That's one of his phrases, thought Miriam —
that's old-fashioned politeness ; courtliness. Be-
hind it he's got some sort of mannish thought
..." the unaccountability of women "...
who can understand a woman — she doesn't even
understand herself — thought he'd given up trying
to make out. He's gone through life and got his
own impressions ; all utterly wrong . . . talking
about them with an air of wisdom to young men
like Gerald . . . my dear boy, a woman never
knows her own mind. How utterly detestable
mannishness is ; so mighty and strong and com-
forting when you have been mewed up with
women all your life, and then suddenly, in a
second, far away, utterly imbecile and aggravating
with a superior self-satisfied smile because a
woman says one thing one minute and another
the next. Men ought to be horsewhipped, all the
grown men, all who have ever had that self-
satisfied smile, all, all, horsewhipped until they
apologise on their knees.

138 HONEYCOMB

4

They sat in a curious oak settee, like a high-
backed church pew. The waitress had cleared
away the tea things and brought cigarettes, large
flat Turkish cigarettes. Responding to her
companion's elaborate apologetic petition for
permission to smoke it did not occur to Miriam
to confess that she herself occasionally smoked.
She forgot the fact in the completeness of her
contentment. On the square oak table in front
of them was a bowl of garden anemones, mauve
and scarlet with black centres, flaring richly in
the soft light coming through the green-tinted
diamond panes of a little low square deep-silled
window. On either side of the window short
red curtains were drawn back and hung in straight,
close folds . . . scarlet geraniums . . . against
the creamy plaster wall. Bowls of flowers stood
on other tables placed without crowding or con-
fusion about the room and there was another
green window with red curtains near a far-off
corner. There were no other customers for the
greater part of their time and when the waitress
was not in the room it was still ; a softly shaded
stillness. Bob's low blurred voice had gone on

HONEYCOMB 139

and on undisturbingly, no questions about her
life or her plans, just jokes, about the tea-service
and everything they had had, making her laugh.
Whenever she laughed, he laughed delightedly.
All the time her eyes had wandered from the
brilliant anemones across to the soft green window
with its scarlet curtains.

CHAPTER VIII

i

WHEN May came life lay round Miriam
without a flaw. She seemed to have
reached the summit of a hill up which she had
been climbing ever since she came to Newlands.
The weeks had been green lanes of experience,
fresh and scented and balmy and free from lurk-
ing fears. Now the landscape lay open before
her eyes, clear from horizon to horizon, sunlit
and flawless, past and future. The present,
within her hands, brought her, whenever she
paused to consider it, to the tips of her toes, as if
its pressure lifted her. She would push £t off,
smiling — turning and shutting herself awa^y from
it, with laughter and closed eyes, she found herself
deeper in the airy flood and drawing breath swam
forward.

The old troubles, the things she had known
from the beginning, the general shadow that lay
over the family life and closed punctually in

140

HONEYCOMB 141

whenever the sun began to shine, her own per-
sonal thoughts, the impossibility of living with
people, poverty, disease, death in a dark corner,
had moved and changed, melted and flowed away.
The family shadow had shrunk long ago, back
in the winter months they had spent in Bennett's
little bachelor villa, to a small black cloud of dis-
grace hanging over her father. At the time of its
appearance, when the extent of his embarrass-
ment was exactly known, she had sunk for a while
under the conviction that the rest of her life must
be spent in a vain attempt to pay off his debts. Her
mind revolved round the problem hopelessly. . . .
Even if she went on the stage she could not make
enough to pay off one of his creditors. Most
women who went on the stage, Gerald had said,
made practically nothing, and the successful ones
had to spend enormous sums in bribery whilst
they were making their way — even the orchestra
expected to be flattered and bribed. She would
have to go on being a resident governess, keeping
ten pounds a year for dress and paying over the
rest of her salary. Her bitter rebellion against
this prospect was reinforced by the creditors'
refusal to make her father a bankrupt. The
refusal brought her a picture of the creditors,

i42 HONEYCOMB

men " on the Stock Exchange," sitting in a circle,
in frock-coats, talking over her father's affairs.
She winced, her blood came scorching against
her skin. She confronted them, " Stop ! " she
shouted, " stop talking — you smug ugly men !
You shall be paid. Stop ! Go away. . . ." But
Gerald had said, " They like the old boy ... it
won't hurt them . . . they're all made of money."
They liked him. They would be kind. What
right had they to be " kind " ? They would be
kind to her too. They would smile at her plan
of restitution and put it on one side. And yet
secretly she knew that each one of them would
like to be paid and was vexed and angry at losing
money just as she was angry at having to sacrifice
her life to them. She would not sacrifice her
life, but if ever she found herself wealthy she
would find out their names and pay them secretly.
Probably that would be never.

Disgrace closed round her, stifling. " It's us —
we're doomed," she thought, feeling the stigma
of her family in her flesh. " If I go on after this,
holding up my head, I shall be a liar and a cheat.
It will show in my face and in my walk, always.''
She bowed her head. " I want to live," mur-

HONEYCOMB 143

mured something. " I want to live, even if I
slink through life. I will. I don't care inside. I
shall always have myself to be with."

Something that was not touched, that sang
far away down inside the gloom, that cared
nothing for the creditors and could get away
down and down into the twilight far away from
the everlasting accusations of humanity. . . . The
disgrace sat only in the muscles of her face, in her
muscles, the stuff of her that had defied and
fought and been laughed at and beaten. It
would not get deeper. Deeper down was some-
thing cool and fresh — endless — an endless garden.
In happiness it came up and made everything in
the world into a garden. Sorrow blotted it over,
but it was always there, waiting and looking on.
It had looked on in Germany and had loved the
music and the words and the happiness of the
German girls and at Banbury Park, giving her no
peace until she got away.

And now it had come to the surface and was
with her all the time. Away in the distance
filling in the horizon was the home life. Beyond
the horizon, gone away for ever into some outer

144 HONEYCOMB

darkness were her old ideas of trouble, disease
and death. Once they had been always quite near
at hand, always ready to strike, laying cold hands
on everything. They would return, but they
would be changed. No need to fear them any
more. She had seen them change. And when
at last they came back, when there was nothing
else left in front of her they would still be
changing. " Get along, old ghosts," she said,
and they seemed friendly and smiling. Her
father and mother, whose failure and death
she had foreseen as a child with sudden
bitter tears, were going on now step by step
towards these ghostly things in the small bright
lamplit villa in Gunnersbury. She had watched
them there during the winter months before she
came to Newlands. They had some secret
together and did not feel the darkness. Their
eyes were careless and bright. Startled, she had
heard them laugh together as they talked in their
room. Often their eyes were preoccupied, as if
they were looking at a picture. She had laughed
aloud at the thought whenever there had been
any excuse, and they had always looked at her
when she laughed her loud laugh. Had they
understood ? Did they know that it was them-

HONEYCOMB 145

selves laughing in her ? Families ought to laugh
together whenever there was any excuse. She
felt that her own grown-up laughter was the end
of all the dreadful years. And three weeks ahead
were the two weddings. The letters from home
gleamed with descriptions of the increasing store
of presents and new-made clothing. Miriam felt
that they were her own ; she would see them all
at the last best moment when they were complete.
She would have all that and all her pride in the
outgoing lives of Sarah and Harriett that were
like two sunlit streams. And meanwhile here
within her hands was Newlands. Three weeks of
days and nights of untroubled beauty. In-
terminable.

2

The roses were in bud. Every day she managed
to visit them at least once, running out alone
into the garden at twilight and coming back rich
with the sense of the twilit green garden and the
increasing stripes of colour between the tight
shining green sheaths.

3

There had been no more talk of painting
lessons. The idea had died in Mrs. Corrie's mind

146 HONEYCOMB

the day after it had been born and a strange
interest, something dreadful that was happening
in London had taken its place. It seemed to
absorb her completely and to spread a strange
curious excitement throughout the house. She
sent a servant every afternoon up to the station
for an evening newspaper. The pink papers dis-
appeared, but she was perpetually making allu-
sions to their strange secret in a way that told
Miriam she wanted to impart it and that irritated
without really arousing her interest. She felt
that anything that was being fussed over in pink
evening papers was probably really nothing at all.
She could not believe that anything that had
such a strange effect on Mrs. Corrie could really
interest her. But she longed to know exactly
what the mysterious thing was. If it was simply
a divorce case Mrs. Corrie would have told her
about it, dropping out the whole story abstract-
edly in one of her little shocked sentences and
immediately going on to speak of something else.
She did not want to hear anything more about
divorce ; all her interested curiosity in divorced
people had been dispersed by her contact with
the Kronens. They had both been divorced
and their lives were broken and muddly and they

HONEYCOMB 147

were not sure of themselves. Mrs. Kronen was
strong and alone. But she was alone and would
always be. If it were a murder everybody would
talk about it openly. It must be something
worse than a murder or a divorce. She felt she
must know, must make Mrs. Corrie tell her and
knew at the same time that she did not want to
be distracted from the pure solid glory of the
weeks by sharing a horrible secret. The thing
kept Mrs. Corrie occupied and interested and
left her free to live undisturbed. It was a barrier
between them. And yet . . . something that a
human being had done that was worse than a
murder or a divorce.

" Is it a divorce ? " she said suddenly and in-
sincerely one afternoon coming upon Mrs. Corrie
scanning the newly arrived newspaper in the
garden.

" Lordy no," laughed Mrs. Corrie self-con-
sciously, scrumpling the paper under her arm.

"What is it?" said Miriam, shaking and
flushing. " Don't tell me, don't tell me," cried
her mind, " don't mention it, you don't know
yourself what it is. Nobody knows what anything

is."

" I couldn't tell you ! " cried Mrs. Corrie.

148 HONEYCOMB

" Why not?" laughed Miriam.

" It's too awful," giggled Mrs. Corrie.

" Oh, you must tell me now you've begun."

" It's the most awful thing there is. It's like
the Bible," said Mrs. Corrie, and fled into the
house.

4

Little cities burning and flaring in a great
plain until everything was consumed. Every-
thing beginning again — clean. Would London
be visited by destruction ? Humanity was as
bad now as in Bible days. It made one feel cold
and sick. In the midst of the beauty and happi-
ness of England — awful things, the worst things
there were. What awful faces those people must
have. It would be dreadful to see them.

5

At the week-end the house seemed full of little
groups of conspirators, talking in corners, full of
secret glee . . . someone describing a room,
drawn curtains and candlelight at midday . . .
wonderful . . . and laughing. Why did they
laugh ? A candle-lit room in the midst of bright
day . . . wonderful, like a shrine.

The low-toned talk went on, in Mr. Corrie's

HONEYCOMB 149

little study behind the half-closed door, in
corners of the hall. Names were mentioned —
the name of the man who wrote the plays, Mrs.
Kronen's " genius." Miriam could only recall
when she was alone that it was a woodland spring-
time name. It comforted her to think that this
name was concerned in the horrible mystery.
Her sympathies veered vaguely out towards the
patch of disgrace in London and her interest

died down.

6

The general preoccupation and excitement
seemed to destroy her link with the household.
As soon as the children's tea was over she felt
herself free. A strange tall woman came to stay
in the house, trailing about in long jewelled
dresses with a slight limp ; Miss Tower, Mrs.
Corrie called her Jin. But the name did not
belong to her. Miriam could not think of any
name that would belong to her . . . talking to
Mrs. Corrie at lunch with amused eyes and
expressionless, small fine features of some illness
that was going to kill her in eight or ten years, of
her friends, talking about her men friends as if
they were boys to be cried over. " Why don't
you marry him ? " Mrs. Corrie would say of one

ISO

HONEYCOMB

or another. How happy the man would be,
thought Miriam, gazing into the strange eyes
and daring her to marry anyone and alter the
eyes. Miss Tower spoke to her now and again
as if she had known her all her life. One day
after lunch she suddenly said, " You ought to
smile more often — you've got pretty teeth ; but
you forget about them. Don't forget about
them " ; and one evening she came into her room
just as she was beginning to undress and stood by
the fire and said, " Your evening dresses are all
wrong. You should have them cut higher, about
the collar-bone — or much lower — don't forget.
Don't forget, you could be charming."

Mrs. Corrie came in herself the next evening
and gave Miriam a full-length cabinet photograph
of herself, suddenly. Afterwards she heard her
saying to Kate on the landing, " Let the poor
thing rest when she can," and they both went
into Kate's room.

7

Every day as soon as the children's tea was over
she fled to her room. The memory of Mrs.
Corrie's little sketch-book had haunted her for
days. She had bought a block and brushes, a
small box of paints and a book on painting in

HONEYCOMB 151

water colours. For days she painted, secure in
the feeling of Mrs. Corrie and Kate occupied
with each other. She rilled sheet after sheet with
swift efforts to recall Brighton skies — sunset,
the red mass of the sun, the profile of the
cliffs, the sky clear or full of heavy cloud, the
darkness of the afternoon sea streaked by a
path of gold, bird-specks, above the cliffs above
the sea. The painting was thick and confused,
the objects blurred and ran into each other, the
image of each recalled object came close before
her eyes, shaking her with its sharp reality, her
heart and hand shook as she contemplated it,
and her body thrilled as she swept her brushes
about. She found herself breathing heavily and
deeply, sure each time of registering what she
saw, sweeping rapidly on until the filled paper
confronted her, a confused mass of shapeless
images, leaving her angry and cold. Each day
what she had done the day before thrilled her
afresh and drove her on, and the time she spent
in contemplation and hope became the heart of
the days as April wore on.

152 HONEYCOMB

8

On the last day of Jin Tower's visit, Miriam
came in from the garden upon Mrs. Corrie
sitting in the hall with her guest. Jin was going
and was sorry that she was going. But Miriam
saw that her gladness was as great as her sorrow.
It always would be. Whatever happened to her.
Mrs. Corrie was sitting at her side bent from the
waist with her arms stretched out and hands
clasped beyond her knees. Miriam was amazed
to see how much Mrs. Corrie had been talking,
and that she was treating Jin's departure as if it
were a small crisis. There was a touch of soft
heat and fussiness in the air. Mrs. Corrie's
features were discomposed. They both glanced
at her as she came across the hall and she smiled,
awkwardly and half paused. Her mind was
turned towards her vision of a great cliff in profile
against a still sky with a deep sea brimming to its
feet in a placid afterglow ; the garden with its
lawn and trees, its bushiness and its buttons of
bright rosebuds had seemed small and troubled
and talkative in comparison. In her slight pause
she offered them her vision, but knew as she went
on upstairs that her attitude had said, " I am the

HONEYCOMB 153

paid governess. You must not talk to me as you
would to each other ; I am an inferior and can
never be an intimate." She was glad that Jin
had left off coming to her room. She did not
want intimacy with anyone if it meant that
strained fussiness in the hall. Meeting Mrs.
Corrie later on the landing she asked with a
sudden sense of inspiration whether she might
have her meal in her room, adding in an insincere
effort at explanation that she wanted to do some
reading up for the children. Mrs. Corrie agreed
with an alacrity that gave her a vision of possible
freedom ahead and a shock of apprehension.
Perhaps she had not succeeded even so far as she
thought in living the Newlands social life. She
spent the evening writing to Eve, asking her if
she remembered sea scenes at Weymouth and
Brighton, pushing on and on weighed down by a
sense of the urgency of finding out whether to
Eve the registration and the recalling of her
impressions was a thing that she must either do
or lose hold of some essential thing . . . she felt
that Eve would somehow admire her own stormy
emphasis but would not really understand how
much it meant to her. She remembered Eve's
comparison of the country round the Greens'

154 HONEYCOMB

house to Leader landscapes — pictures, and how
delightful it had seemed to her that she had such
things all round her to look at. But her thoughts
of the great brow and downward sweep of cliff
and the sea coming up to it was not a picture, it
was a thing ; her cheeks flared as she searched
for a word — it was an experience, perhaps the
most important thing in life — far in away from
any " glad mask," a thing belonging to that
strange inner life and independent of everybody.
Perhaps it was a betrayal, a sort of fat noisy
gossiping to speak of it even to Eve. " You'll
think I'm mad" she concluded, " but I'm not."
When the letter was finished the Newlands life
seemed very remote. She was alone in a strange,
luxurious room that did not belong to her, lit by
a hard electric light that had been put there by
some hardworking mechanic to whom the house
was just a house with electric fittings. She felt
a touch of the half- numb half-feverish stupor
that had been her daily mood at Banbury Park.
She would go on teaching the Corrie children,
but her evenings in future would be divided
between unsuccessful efforts to put down her
flaming or peaceful sunset scenes and to explain
their importance to Eve.

CHAPTER IX
i

BUT the next evening when Mr. Corrie came
down for the week-end with a party of
guests, Mrs. Corrie appeared with swift sudden-
ness in Miriam's room and glanced at her morn-
ing dress.

" I say, missy, you'll have to hurry up."
" Oh, I didn't dress . . . the house is full of
strangers."

" No, it isn't ; there's Melie and Tom . . .
Tommy and Melie."

" Yes, but I know there are crowds."
She did not want to meet the Cravens again,
and the strangers would turn out to be some sort
of people saying certain sorts of things over and
over again, and if she went down she would not
be able to get away as soon as she knew all about
them. She would be fixed ; obliged to listen.
When anyone spoke to her, grimacing as the
patronised governess or saying what she thought
and being hated for it.

156 HONEYCOMB

" Crowds," she repeated, as Mrs, Corrie placed
a large lump in the centre of the blaze.

They had her here, in this beautiful room and
looked after her comfort as if she were a
guest.

" Nonsensy-nonsense. You must come down
and see the fun." Miriam glanced at her empty
table. In the drawer hidden underneath the
table-cover were her block and paints. Presently
she' could, if she held firm, be alone, in a grey
space inside this alien room, cold and lonely and
with the beginning of something . . . dark
painful beginning of something that could not
come if people were there. . . . Downstairs,
warmth and revelry.

" You must come down and see the fun," said
Mrs. Corrie, getting up from the fire and trailing
across the room with bent head. " A nun — a
nun in amber satin," thought Miriam, surveying
her back.

" Want you to come down," said Mrs. Corrie
plaintively from the door. Cold air came in
from the landing ; the warmth of the room
stirred to a strange vitality, the light glowed
clearer within its ruby globe. The silvery
clatter- of entree dishes came up from the hall.

HONEYCOMB 157

" All right," said Miriam, turning exultantly
to the chest of drawers.

" A victory over myself or some sort of treach-
ery ? " . . .- The long drawer which held her
evening things seemed full of wonders. She
dragged out a little home-made smocked blouse
of pale blue nun's veiling that had seemed too
dowdy for Newlands and put it on over her
morning skirt. It shone upon her. Rapidly
washing her hands, away from the glamour of
the looking-glass, she mentally took stock of her
hair, untouched since the morning, the amateur
blouse, its crude clear blue hard against the
harsh black skirt. Back again at the dressing-
table as she dried her hands she found the
miracle renewed. The figure that confronted
her in the mirror was wrapped in some strange
harmonising radiance. She looked at it for a
moment as she would have looked at an unknown
picture, in tranquil disinterested contemplation.
The sound of the gong came softly into the room,
bringing her no apprehensive contraction of nerves.
She wove its lingering note into the imagined
tinkling of an old melody from a wooden musical
box. Opening the door before turning out her
gas she found a small bunch of hothouse lilies of

158 HONEYCOMB

the valley lying on the writing-table. . . . Mrs.
Corrie — " you must come."

Tucking them into her belt she went slowly
downstairs, confused by a picture coming between
her and her surroundings like a filmy lantern
slide, of Portland Bill lying on a smooth sea in a
clear afterglow. . . .

" Quite a madonna," said Mrs. Staple-Craven
querulously. She sat low in her chair, her round
gold head on its short stalk standing firmly up
from billowy frills of green silk . . . " a fat
water-lily," mused Miriam, and went wandering
through the great steamy glass-houses at Kew,
while the names that had been murmured
during the introductions echoed irrelevantly in
her brain.

" She must wear her host's colours sometimes,"
said Mr. Corrie quickly and gently.

Miriam glanced her surprise and smiled shyly
in response to his shy smile. It was as if the faint
radiance that she felt all round her had been out-
lined by a flashing blade. Mrs. Craven might go
on resenting it ; she could not touch it again. It
steadied and concentrated ; flowing from some in-

HONEYCOMB 159

exhaustible inner centre, it did not get beyond
the circle outlined by the flashing blade, but
flowed back on her and out again and back until
it seemed as if it must lift her to her feet. Her
eyes caught the clear brow and smooth innocently
sleeked dark hair of a man at the other end of the
table — under the fine level brows was a loudly
talking, busily eating face — all the noise of the
world, and the brooding grieving unconscious
brow above it. Everyone was talking. She
glanced. The women showed no foreheads ;
but their faces were not noisy ; they were like
the brows of the men, except Mrs. Craven's.
Her silent face was mouthing and complaining
aloud all the time.

3

" Old Felix has secured himself the best
partner," Miriam heard someone mutter as she
made her fluke, a resounding little cannon and
pocket in one stroke. Wandering after her ball
she fought against the suggesting voice. It had
come from one of the men moving about in the
gloom surrounding the radiance cast by the
green-shaded lamps upon the long green table.
Faces moving in the upper darkness were in-

160 HONEYCOMB

distinguishable. The white patch of Mrs. Cor-
rie's face gleamed from the settee as she sat bent
forward with her hands clasped in front of her
knees. Beyond her, sitting back under the shadow
of the mantelpiece and the marking board was
Mrs. Craven, a faint mass of soft green and mealy
white. All the other forms were standing or
moving in the gloom ; standing watchful and
silent, the gleaming stems of their cues held in
rest, shifting and moving and strolling with un-
colliding ordered movements and little murmurs
of commentary after the little drama — the
sudden snap of the stroke breaking the stillness,
the faint thundering roll of the single ball, the
click of the concussion, the gentle angular ex-
plosion of pieces into a new relation and the
breaking of the varying triangle as a ball rolled
to its hidden destination held by all the eyes in
the room until its rumbling pilgrimage ended out
of sight in a soft thud. It was pure joy to Miriam
to wander round the table after her ball, sheltered
in the gloom, through an endless " grand chain "
of undifferentiated figures that passed and re-
passed without awkwardness or the need for
forced exchange ; held together and separated
by the ceremony of the game. Comments came

HONEYCOMB 161

after each stroke, words and sentences sped and
smoothed and polished by the gloom like the
easy talking of friends in a deep twilight ; but
between each stroke were vast intervals of un-
troubled silent intercourse. The competition of
the men, the sense of the desire to win, that rose
and strained in the room could not spoil this
communion. After a stroke, pondering the balls
while the room and the radiance and the darkness
moved and flowed and the dim figures settled to
a fresh miracle of grouping, it was joy to lean
along the board to her ball, keeping punctual
appointment with her partner whose jaunty little
figure would appear in supporting opposition
under the bright light, drawing at his cigarette
with a puckering half-smile, awaiting her sugges-
tion and ready with counsel. Doing her best to
measure angles and regulate the force of her blow
she struck careless little lifting strokes that made
her feel as if she danced, and managed three more
cannons and a pocket before her little break came
to an end.

4

" It must be jolly to smoke in the in-between
times," said Miriam, standing about at a loss
during a long break by one of her opponents.

162 HONEYCOMB

" Yes, you ought to learn to smoke," responded
Mr. Corrie judicially. The quiet smile — the
serene offer of companionship, the whole room
troubled with the sense of the two parties, the
men with whom she was linked in the joyous
forward going strife of the game and the women
on the sofa, suddenly grown monstrous in their
opposition of clothes and kindliness and the fuss
of distracting personal insincerities of voice and
speech attempting to judge and condemn the
roomful of quiet players, shouting aloud to her
that she was a fool to be drawn in to talking
to men seriously on their own level, a fool to
parade about as if she really enjoyed their
silly game. " I hate women and they've got
to know it," she retorted with all her strength,
hitting blindly out towards the sofa, feeling
all the contrivances of toilet and coiffure
fall in meaningless horrible detail under her
blows.

" I do smoke," she said, leaving her partner's
side and going boldly to the sofa corner. " Rag-
bags, bundles of pretence," she thought, as she
confronted the women. They glanced up with
cunning eyes. They looked small and cringing.
She rushed on, sweeping them aside. . . . Who

HONEYCOMB 163

had made them so small and cheated and for all
their smiles so angry ? What was it they wanted ?
What was it women wanted that always made
them so angry ?

" Would you mind if I smoked ? " she asked
in a clear gay tone, cutting herself from Mrs.
Corrie with a wrench as she faced her glittering
frightened eyes.

" Of course not, my dear lady — I don't mind,
if you don't," she said, tweaking affectionately at
Miriam's skirt. " Ain't she a gay dog, Melie,
ain't she a gay dog ! "

5

" It's a pleasure to see you smoke," murmured
Mr. Corrie fervently, " you're the first woman
I've seen smoke con amore"

Contemplating the little screwed-up apprecia-
tive smile on the features of her partner, bunched
to the lighting of his own cigarette, Miriam dis-
charged a double stream of smoke violently
through her nostrils— breaking out at last a public
defiance of the freemasonry of women. " I
suppose I'm a new woman — I've said I am now,
anyhow," she reflected, wondering in the back-
ground of her determination how she would

164 HONEYCOMB

reconcile the role with her work as a children's
governess. " I'm not in their crowd, anyhow ;
I despise their silly secret," she pursued, feeling
out ahead towards some lonely solution of her
difficulty that seemed to come shapelessly to-
wards her, but surely — the happy weariness of
conquest gave her a sense of some unknown
strength in her.

For the rest of the evening the group in the
sofa-corner presented her a frontage of fawning

and flattery.

6

Coming down with the children to lunch the
next day, Miriam found the room dark and chill
in the bright midday. It was as if it were empty.
But if it had been empty it would have been
beautiful in the still light and tranquil. There
was a dark cruel tide in the room, she sought in
vain for a foothold. A loud busy voice was talking
from Mr. Corrie's place at the head of the table.
Mr. Staple-Craven, busy with cold words to
hide the truth. He paused as the nursery trio
came in and settled at the table and then shouted
softly and suddenly at Mrs. Corrie, " What's
Corrie having ? '3

" Biscuits," chirped Mrs. Corrie eagerly, " bis-

HONEYCOMB 165

cuits and sally in the study." She sat forward,
gathering herself to disperse the gloom. But
Mrs. Craven's deep voice drowned her un-
spoken gaieties . . . ah — he's not gone away,
thought Miriam rapidly, he's in the house. . . .

" Best thing for biliousness," gonged Mrs.
Craven, and Mr. Craven busily resumed.

" It's only the fisherman who knows anything,
anything whatever about the silver stream.
Necessarily. Necessarily. It is the — the concen-
tration^ the — the absorption of the passion that
enables him to see. Er, the fisherman, the poet-
tantamount ; exchangeable terms. Fishing is,
indeed one might say "

The men of the party were devouring their
food with the air of people just about to separate
to fulfil urgent engagements. They bent and
gobbled busily and cast smouldering glances
about the table, as if with their eyes they would
suggest important mysteries brooding above
their animated muzzles.

Miriam's stricken eyes sought their foreheads
for relief. Smooth brows and neatly brushed
hair above ; but the smooth motionless brows
were ramparts of hate ; pure murderous hate.
That's men, she said, with a sudden flash of cer-

166 HONEYCOMB

tainty, that's men as they are, when they are
opposed, when they are real. All the rest is
pretence. Her thoughts flashed forward to a
final clear issue of opposition, with a husband.
Just a cold blank hating forehead and neatly
brushed hair above it. If a man doesn't under-
stand or doesn't agree he's just a blank bony
conceitedly thinking, absolutely condemning
forehead, a face below, going on eating — and
going off somewhere. Men are all hard angry
bones ; always thinking something, only one
thing at a time and unless that is agreed to, they
murder. My husband shan't kill me. . . . I'll
shatter his conceited brow — make him see ...
two sides to every question ... a million
sides ... no questions, only sides . . . always
changing. Men argue, think they prove things ;
their foreheads recover — cool and calm. Damn
them all — all men.

7

" Fee ought to be out here," said Mrs. Corrie,
moving her basket chair to face away from the
sun.

The garden blazed in the fresh warm air. But
there was no happiness in it. Everything was
lost and astray. The house-party had dispersed

HONEYCOMB 167

and disappeared. Mrs. Corrie sat and strolled
about the garden, joyless, as if weighed down by
some immovable oppression. If Mr. Corrie
were to come out and sit there too it would be
worse. It was curious to think that the garden
was his at all. He would come feebly out, looking
ill and they would all sit, uneasy and afraid.
But Mrs. Come wanted him to come out, knew
he ought to be there. It was she who had thought
of it. It was intolerable to think of his coming.
Yet he had been " crazy mad " about her for
five years. Five years and then this. Whose
fault was it ? His or hers ? Or was marriage
always like that ? Perhaps that was why she and
Mrs. Craven had laughed when they were asked
whether marriage was a failure. Mrs. Craven
had no children. Nothing to think about but
stars and spirits and her food and baths and little
silk dresses and Mr. Craven treated her as if she
were a child he had got tired of petting. She
did not even go fishing with him. She was lying
down in her room and tea would be taken up to
her. At least she thought of herself and seemed to
enjoy life. But she was getting fatter and fatter.
Mrs. Corrie did not want anything for herself,
except for the fun of getting things. She cared

1 68 HONEYCOMB

only for the children and when they grew up they
would have nothing to talk to her about. Sybil
would have thoughts behind her ugly strong face.
She would tell them to no one. The boy would
adore her, until his wife whom he would adore
came between them. So there was nothing for
women in marriage and children. Because they
had no thoughts. Their husbands grew to hate
them because they had no thoughts. But if a
woman had thoughts a man would not be " silly "
about her for five years. And Mrs. Corrie had
her garden. She would always have that, when
he was not there.

" If you were to go and ask him," said Mrs.
Corrie, brushing out her dress with her hands,
« he'd come out."

" Me ! " said Miriam in amazement.

" Yes, go on, my dear, you see ; he'll

come."

" But perhaps he doesn't want to," said Miriam,
suddenly feeling that she was playing a familiar
part in a novel and wanting to feel quite sure
she was reading her role aright.

" You go and try," laughed Mrs. Corrie
gently. " Make him come out."

" I'll tell him you wish him to come," said

HONEYCOMB 169

Miriam gravely, getting to her feet. " All right"
she thought, " if I have more influence over him
than you it's not my fault, not anybody's fault,
but how horrid you must feel."

8

Miriam's trembling fingers gave a frightened
fumbling tap at the study door. " Come in,"
said Mr. Corrie officially, and coughed a loose,
wheezy cough. He was sitting by the fire in one
of the huge armchairs and didn't look up as she
entered. She stood with the door half closed
behind her, fighting against her fear and the cold
heavy impression of his dull grey dressing-gown
and the grey rug over his knees.

" It's so lovely in the garden," she said,
fervently fixing her eyes on the small white face,
a little puffy under its grizzled hair. He looked
stiffly in her direction.

" The sun is so warm," she went on hurriedly.

" Mrs. Corrie thought " she stopped. Of

course the man was too ill to be worried. For
an eternity she stood, waiting. Mr. Corrie
coughed his little cough and turned again to the
fire. If only she could sit down in the other chair,
saying nothing and just be there. He looked so

170 HONEYCOMB

unspeakably desolate. He hated being there, not
able to play or work.

" I hate being ill," she said at last, " it always
seems such waste of time." She knew she had
borrowed that from someone and that it would
only increase the man's impatience. " I always
have to act and play parts," she thought angrily
— and called impatiently to her everyday vision
of him to dispel the obstructive figure in the
armchair.

" Umph," said Mr. Corrie judicially.

" You could have a chair," she ventured, " and
just sit quietly."

" No thanks, Pm not coming out." He turned
a kind face in her direction without meeting her
eyes.

" You have such a nice room," said Miriam
vaguely, getting to the door.

" Do you like it ? " It was his everyday voice,
and Miriam stopped at the door without turning.

" It's so absolutely your own," she said.

Mr. Corrie laughed. " That's a strange
definition of charm."

" I didn't say charming. I said your own."

Mr. Corrie laughed out. " Because it's mine it's
nice, but it is, for the same reason, not charming."

HONEYCOMB 171

" You're tying me up into something I haven't
said. There's a fallacy in what you have just
said, somewhere."

c You'll never be tied up in anything, made-
moiselle— you'll tie other people up. But there
was no fallacy."

" No verbal fallacy," said Miriam eagerly, " a
fallacy of intention, deliberate misreading."

" No wonder you think the sun would do me
good."

" How do you mean ? "

" I'm such a miscreant."

" Oh no, you're not," said Miriam comfort-
ingly, turning round. " I don't want you to
come out " — she advanced boldly and stirred the
fire. " I always like to be alone when I'm ill."

" That's better," said Mr. Corrie.

" Good-bye," breathed Miriam, getting rapidly
to the door . . . poor wretched man . . .
wanting quiet kindness.

" Thank you ; good-bye," said Mr. Corrie
gently.

9

" Then you'd say, Corrie," said Mr. Staple-
Craven, as they all sat down to dinner on Sunday
evening . . . now comes flattery, thought

172 HONEYCOMB

Miriam calmly — nothing mattered, the curtains
were back, the light not yet gone from the
garden and birds were fluting and chirruping
out there on the lawn where she had played
tennis all the afternoon — at home there was the
same light in the little garden and Sarah and
Harriett were there in happiness, she would see
them soon and meantime, the wonder, the fresh
rosebuds, this year's, under the clear soft lamp-
light.

" You'd say that no one was to blame for the
accident."

" The cause of the accident was undoubtedly
the signalman's sudden attack of illness."

Pause. " It sounds," thought Miriam, " as
if he were reading from the Book of Judgment.
It isn't true either. Perhaps a judgment can
never be true." She pondered to the singing
of her blood.

" In other words," said one of the younger
men, in a narrow nasal sneering clever voice,
" it was a purely accidental accident,"

" Purely," gurgled Mr. Corrie, in a low,
pleased tone.

" They think they're really beginning," mused
Miriam, rousing herself.

HONEYCOMB 173

" A genuine accident within the meaning of
the act," blared Mr. Craven.

" An actident," murmured Mr. Corrie.

" In that case," said another man, " I mean
since the man was discovered ill, not drunk, by a
doctor in his box, all the elaborate legal proceed-
ings would appear to be rather — superfluous."

" Not at all, not at all," said Mr. Corrie
testily.

Miriam listened gladly to the anger in his voice,
watching the faint movement of the window
curtains and waiting for the justification of the
law.

" The thing must be subject to a detailed
inquiry before the man can be cleared."

" He might have felt ill before he took up his
duties — you'd hardly get him to admit that."

" Lawyers can get people to admit anything,"
said Mr. Craven cheerfully, and broke the silence
that followed his sally by a hooting monotonous
recitative which he delivered, swaying right and
left from his hips, " that is to say — they by
beneficently pursuing unexpected — quite un-
expected bypaths — suddenly confront — their—
their examinees — with the truth — the Truth."

" It's quite a good point to suggest that the

174 HONEYCOMB

chap felt ill earlier in the day — that's one of the
things you'd have to find out. You'd have, at
any rate, to know all the circumstances of the

seizure."

" Indigestible food," said Miriam, " or badly
cooked food."

" Ah," said Mr. Corrie, his face clearing,
" that's an excellent refinement."

" In that case the cause of the accident would
be the cook."

Mr. Corrie laughed delightedly.

" I don't say that because I'm interested, but
because I wanted to take sides with him," thought
Miriam, " the others know that and resent it
and now I'm interested."

"Perhaps," she said, feeling anxiously about
the incriminated cook, " the real cause then would
be a fault in her upbringing, I mean he may have
lately married a young woman whose mother
had not taught her cooking."

" Oh, you can't go back further than the cook,"
said Mr. Corrie finally.

" But the cause," she persisted, in a low,
anxious voice, " is the sum total of all the cir-

cumstances."

" No, no," said Mr. Corrie impenetrably, with

HONEYCOMB 175

a hard face — " you can't take the thing back into
the mists of the past."

He dropped her and took up a lead coming
from a man at the other end of the table.

" Oh," thought Miriam coldly, appraising
him with a glance, the slightly hollow temples,
the small skull, a little flattened, the lack of
height in the straight forehead, why had she not
noticed that before ? — the general stinginess of
the head balancing the soft keen eyes and whimsi-
cal mouth — " that's you ; you won't, you can't
look at anything from the point of view of life
as a whole " — she shivered and drew away from
the whole spectacle and pageant of Newlands'
life. It all had this behind it, a man, able to do
and decide things who looked about like a ferret
for small clever things, causes, immediate near
causes that appeared to explain, and explained
nothing and had nothing to do with anything.
Her hot brain whirled back — signalmen, in bad
little houses with bad cooking — tinned foods —
they're a link — they bring all sorts of things into
their signal boxes. They ought to bring the
fewest possible dangerous things. Something
ought to be done.

Lawyers were quite happy, pleased with them-

i;6 HONEYCOMB

selves if they made some one person guilty — put
their finger on him. " Can't go back into the
mists of the past . . . you didn't understand,
you're not capable of understanding any real
movements of thought. I always knew it. You
think — in propositions. Can't go back. Of
course you can go back, and round and up and
everywhere. Things as a whole . . - . you under-
stand nothing. We've done. That's you. Mr.
Corrie — a leading Q.C. Heavens."

In that moment Miriam felt that she left
Newlands for ever. She glanced at Mrs. Corrie
and Mrs. Craven — bright beautiful coloured
birds, fading slowly year by year in the stifling
atmosphere, the hard brutal laughing complacent
atmosphere of men's minds . . . men's minds,
staring at things, ignorantly, knowing " every-
thing " in an irritating way and yet ignorant.

CHAPTER X

i

COMING home at ten o'clock in the morning,
Miriam found the little villa standing quiet
and empty in the sunshine. The sound of her
coming down the empty tree-lined roadway had
brought no face to either of the open windows.
She stood on the short fresh grass in the small
front garden looking up at the empty quiet
windows. During her absence the dark winter
villa had changed. It had become home. The
little red brick facade glowed as she looked up at
it. It belonged to her family. All through the
spring weather they had been living behind the
small bright house-front. It was they who had
set those windows open and left them standing
open to the spring air. They had gone out, of
course ; all of them ; to be busy about the
weddings. But inside was a place for her ;
things ready ; a bed prepared where she would
lie to-night in the darkness. The sun would
come up to-morrow and be again on this green

N 177

1 78 HONEYCOMB

grass. She could come out on the grass in the

morning.

2

The sounds of her knocking and ringing echoed
through the house with a summery resonance.
All the inside doors were standing open. Foot-
steps came and the door opened upon Mary.
She had forgotten Mary and stood looking at
her. Mary stood in her lilac print dress and little
mob cap, filling the doorway in the full sunlight.
She had shone through all the years in the
grey basement kitchens at Barnes. Miriam had
never before seen her face to face in the sunlight,
her tawny red Somersetshire hair ; the tawny
freckles on the soft rose of her face ; the red in
her shy warm eyes. They both stood gazing.
The strong sweet curve of Mary's bony chin
moved her thoughtful mouth. " How nice you
do look, Miss Mirry." Miriam took her by the
arm and trundled her into the house. They
moved into the little dining-room filled with, a
blaze of sunlight and smelling of leather and
tobacco and fresh brown paper and string and
into the dim small drawing-room at the back.
The tiny greenhouse plastered on its hindmost
wall was full of growing things. Mary dropped

HONEYCOMB 179

phrases, offering Miriam her share of the things
that had happened while she had been away.
She listened deferentially, her heart rising high.
After all these years she and Mary were confess-
ing their love to each other.

3

She went down the road with a bale of art
muslin over her shoulder and carrying a small
bronze table-lamp with a pink silk shade. The
bright bunchy green heads of the little lopped
acacia trees bobbed against their background of
red brick villa as she walked . . . little moving
green lampshades for Harriett's life ; they were
like Harriett ; like her delicate laughter and
absurdity. The sounds of the footsteps of
passers-by made her rejoice more keenly in her
burdens. She felt herself a procession of sacred
emblems, in the sunshine. The sunshine streamed
about her from an immense height of blue sky.
The sky had never been so high as it was above
Harriett's green acacias. It had gone soaring up
to-day for them all ; their sky.

That eldest Wheeler girl, going off to India,
to marry a divorced man. Julia seemed to think

i8o HONEYCOMB

it did not matter if she were happy. How could
she be happy ? . . . Coming home from the
" Second Mrs. Tanqueray " Bennett had asked
Sarah if she would have married a man with a
past ... it was not only that his studies had
kept him straight. It was himself . . . and
Gerald too. It was . . . there were two kinds
of men. You could tell them at a glance. Life
was clean and fresh for Sarah and Harriett. . . .
There were two kinds of people. Most of the
people who were going about ought to be shut
up, somehow, in prison.

4

Eve came into the little room with her arms
full of Japanese anemones. Behind her came a
tall man with red-brown hair, a stout fresh face
and beautifully cut clothes. Miriam bowed him
a greeting without waiting for introduction and
went on arranging her festoons of art muslin
about the white wooden mantelpiece. He was
carrying a trayful of little fluted green glasses
each half filled with water. He came into the
room on a holiday — a little interval in his man's
life — delighted to be arranging the tray of
glasses ; half contemptuous and very happy.

HONEYCOMB 181

Pleased and surprised at himself and ready for
miracles. He was not married — but he was a
marrying man — a ladies' man — a man of the world
— something like Bob Greville — with the same
sort of attitude towards women. ..." The
vagaries of the Fair "... a special manner for
women and a clubby life of his own, with men.
Women meant sex to him, the reproduction of
the species my dear chap, and his comforts and a
little music on Sunday afternoon. He loved
his mother, that was certain, Miriam felt, from
something in his voice, and respected all mothers ;
the sort of man who would " look after " a
woman properly, but would never know any-
thing about her. And there was something in
himself that he knew nothing about. Some
woman would live with him in loneliness, mad-
dened, waiting for that something to speak.
Secretly he would be half contemptuous, half
afraid of her and would keep on always with that
mocking, obsequious, patronising manner. Hor-
rible— and so easy to deceive, and yet cruel to
deceive. Hit him ... hit him awake. He put
down the tray of glasses near the heap of anemones
that Eve had flung on the table and enquired
whether they were to put one bloom in each

1 82 HONEYCOMB

glass. . . . He had a secret, indulgent life of his
own. Did he imagine that no one knew ? . . .
Eve giggled and tittered . . . this new giggling
way of Eve's . . . perhaps it was the way the
Greens treated young men ; arch and silly, like
the girls at the tennis club. He must see through
it. He was not in the least like the tennis club
young men, most of whom needed to be giggled
at before they could be anything but just sneery
and silly.

5

But it was fascinating, like something in a
novel come true ; the latest tableau in all the
wedding tableaux ; their own. Bennett and
Gerald had swept the lonely Henderson family
into this. One was going to be a sister-in-law
for certain, to-morrow. . . . Held up by this
dignity Miriam concentrated on Jier folds and
loops, adjusting and pinning with her back to
the room, listening to the sparring and giggling,
the sounds of the tinkling glasses — the scissors
snipping and dropping with a rattle on to the
table, the soft flurring of shifted blossoms. The
moment was coming. The man was being
impudently patronising to Eve, but really talk-
ing at her, trying to make her turn round. She

HONEYCOMB 183

did not want him. There was something . . .
some quality in men that this kind of man did
not possess . . . something she knew . . . who ?
It was somewhere, but not in him. Still, his
being there gave an edge to her freedom and
happiness. She owed him some kind of truth
, . . some blow or shock. Holding her last
festoon in place she consulted some jumbled
memory and found a phrase : " Will you people
leave off squabbling and just see if this is all right
before I nail it up ? " She spoke in a cool even
tone that filled the room. It startled her, making
her feel sad, small and guilty. Still with her back
to the, room she waited during the moment of
silence that followed her words. " It's simply
lovely, Mirry," said Eve. Had she been more
vulgar than Eve ? She knew her decoration was
all right and did not want an opinion. She
wanted to crush the man's behaviour, trample
on it and fling it out of the room. Eve was
sweeter and more lovable than she. Mother
said it was natural and right to laugh and joke
with young men. No ... no ... no. . . .

She glanced, asking Eve to hold the corner
while she went for the hammer and nails. Eve
came eagerly forward. The man was standing

1 84 HONEYCOMB

upright and motionless by the table, looking
quietly at her as she stood back for Eve to substi-
tute a supporting hand. " Er — let me do that,"
he said gravely — " or go for the hammer." He
was at the door : " Oh — thanks," said Miriam,
in a hard tone ; " you will find it in the
kitchen."

Eve remained holding the muslin with down-
cast face and conscious lips. Seizing a vase of
anemones Miriam put it on the marble, bunch-
ing up the muslin to hide the vase.

" This is their smoking-room," she said, her
voice praying for tolerance. Eve beamed sadly
and gladly. " Yes — isn't it jolly ? " Joining
hands they waltzed about the room. Eve did not
really mind ; she fought, but there was some-
thing in her that did not mind.

6

Through the French windows of the new
drawing-room Miriam saw a group of figures
moving towards the end of the garden. In a
moment they would have reached the low brick
wall at the end of the garden. They might stand
talking there with their heads outlined against
the green painted trellis-work that ran along the

HONEYCOMB 185

top of the wall or they might walk back towards
the house and see her at the window.

She hid herself from view. The room closed
round her. She could not sit down on one of
the new chairs. The room was too full. Things
were speaking to her. Their challenge had sent
her to the window when she came into the room.
It had made her feel like a trespasser. Now she
was caught. She stood breathing in curious
odours ; faint odours of new wood and fresh
upholstery, and the strange strong subdued
emanation coming from the black grand piano, a
mingling of the smell of aromatic wood with the
hard raw bitter tang of metal and the muffled
woolly pungency of new felting.

The whole of the floor space up to the edge of
the skirting was filled by a soft thick rich carpet
of clear green with a border and centre-piece of
large soft fresh pink full-blown roses. Stand-
ing about on it were a set of little delicate shiny
black chairs, with seats covered with silken
stripings of pink and green, two great padded
easy-chairs, deep cushioned and low-seated, and
three little polished black tables of different
shapes. A black overmantel with shelves andjside
brackets, holding fluted white bowls framed a

i86 HONEYCOMB

long strip of deeply bevelled mirror. The wooden
mantelpiece was draped at the sides like the high
French windows with soft straight hanging
green silk curtains. At the windows long
creamy net curtains hung, pulled in narrow
straight folds just within the silk ones.

The walls swept up dimly striped with rose and
green, the green misty and changeful, glossy or
dull as you moved. And on the widest spaced
wall dreadful presences . . . two long narrow
dark-framed pictures, safe and far-off and dreamy
in shop windows, but now, shut in here, suddenly
full of sad heavy dreadful meaning. A girl,
listening to the words she had waited for, not
seeing the youth who is gazing at her, not even
thinking of him, but seeing suddenly everything
opening far far away, and leaving him, going on
alone, to things he will never see, joining the
lonely women of the past, feeling her old self still
there, wanting everyone to know that she was
still there, and cut off, for ever. There was
something ahead ; but she could not take him
with her. He would see it now and again, in her
face, but would never understand. And the other
picture ; the girl grown into a woman ; just
married, her face veiled forever, her eyes closed ;

HONEYCOMB 187

sinking into the tide, his strong frame near her
the only reality ; blindly trying to get back to
him across the tide of separation.

Their child will come — throwing even the
support of him off and away, making her mon-
strous . . . and then born into life between
them, forever, " drawing them together," show-
ing they were separate ; between them, forever.
There was no getting away from that.

The strange strong crude odours breathing
quietly out from the open lid of the new piano
seemed to support them, to make them more
mockingly inexorable.

7

The smell of the piano would go on being there
while inexorable things happened.

Voices were sounding in the garden. . . .

Hanging on either side of the mantelpiece were
two more pictures — square green garden scenes.
. . . There was relief in the deeps of the gardens
and in under the huge spreading trees that nearly
filled the sky. There were tiresome people fussing
in the foreground . . . Marcus Stone people-
having scenes — not noticing the garden ; getting
in the way of the garden. But the garden was

188 HONEYCOMB

there, blazing, filled with some particular time
of day, always being filled with different times of
day.

There would be in-between times for Harriett
— her own times/ Times when she would be at
peace in this room near the garden. Away from
the kitchen and strange-eyed servants, and from
the stern brown and yellow pig-skin dining-room.
In here she would have fragrant little teas ; and
talk as if none of those other things existed. There
were figures standing at the French window.

8

She opened the window upon Harriett and
Gerald. Standing a little aloof from them was a
man. As Harriett spoke to her Miriam met his
strange eyes wide and dark, unseeing ; no,
glaring at things that did not interest him . . .
desperate, playing a part. His thin squarish
frame hung loosely, whipped and beaten, within
his dark clothes.

His eyes passed expressionlessly from her face
to Harriett.

A great gust of laughter sounded from the
open kitchen window away to the left, screened
by a trellis over which the lavish trailings of a

HONEYCOMB 189

creeper made a bright green curtain. It was
Bennett's voice. He had just accomplished
something or other.

" Ullo," said Harriett. The strange man was
holding his lower lip in with his teeth, as if in
horror or pain. . . . They stood in a row on the
gravel.

" Let me introduce Mr. Grove," said Harriett,
with a shy movement of her head and shoulders,
keeping her hands clasped. Her face was all
broken up. She could either laugh or cry. But
there was something, a sort of light, chiselling it,
holding everything back.

Miriam bowed. " What's Bennett doing ? "
she said hurriedly.

" The last time / saw him he was standing on
the kitchen table fighting with the gas bracket,"
said Gerald.

The sallow man drew in his breath sharply and
stood aside, staring down the garden. Miriam
glanced at him, wondering. He was not criticis-
ing Gerald. It was something else.

" I say, Mirry, what did you do to old Tre-
mayne this morning ? " went on Gerald.

" What do you mean ? " said Miriam interested.
This was the novel going on. . . .

190 HONEYCOMB

She must read it through even at this strange
moment . . . this moment was the right setting
to read through Gerald that little exciting far-
away finished thing of the morning, to know
that it had been right. She felt decked. Gerald
stood confronting her and spoke low, fingering
the anemones in her belt. The others were talk-
ing. Harriett in high short laughing sentences,
the man gasping and moaning his replies, making
jerky movements. He was not considering his
words, but looking for the right, appropriate
things to say. Miriam rejoiced over him as she
smiled encouragingly at Gerald.

" Well, my dear, he wanted to know — who you
were ; and he swears he's going to be engaged to
you before the year is out."

" What abominable cheek," said Miriam, flush-
ing with delight. Then she had taken the right
line. How easy. This was how things happened.

" No, my dear, he didn't mean to be cheeky."

" I call it the most abominable cheek."

" No you don't " ; Gerald was looking at her
with fatherly solicitude. " That's what he said
anyhow — and he meant it. Ask Harry."

" Frivolous young man."

" Well, he's an awful flirt, I warn you ; but

HONEYCOMB 191

he's struck this time — all of a heap . . . came
and raved about you the minute he'd seen you,
and when he heard you were Harry's sister that's
what he said."

" Pm sure I'm awfully obliged to his majesty."
Gerald laughed and turned, looking for Har-
riett and moving to her. Miriam caught at a
vision of the well-appointed man, a year ... a
home full of fresh new things, no more need to
make money ; a stylish contented devoted sort
of man, who knew nothing about one. It would
be a fraud, unfair to him ... so easy to pretend
to admire him . . . well, there it was ... an
offer of freedom . . . that was admirable, in
almost any man, the power to lift one out into
freedom. He wanted to lift her out — her, not
any other woman. It was rather wonderful, and
appealing. She hung over his moment of cer-
tainty in pride and triumph. But there was
something wrong somewhere ; though she felt
that someone had placed a jewel in her hair.
Gerald had drawn Harriett through- the doorway
into the drawing-room. The sunlight followed
them. They looked solid and powerful. The
strange terrors of the room were challenged by
their sunlit figures.

192 HONEYCOMB

9

Moving to the side of Gerald's strange friend
Miriam said something about the garden in a
determined manner. He drew a sawing breath
without answering. They walked down the short
garden. It moved about them in an intensity of
afternoon colour. He did not know it was there ;
there was something between him and the little
coloured garden. He walked with bent head, his
head dipping from his shoulders with a little bob
at each step. Miriam wanted to make him feel
the garden moving round them ; either she must
do that or ask him why he was suffering. He
walked responsively, as if they were talking. He
was feeling some sort of reprieve . . . perhaps
the afternoon had bored him. They had turned
and were walking back towards the house. If
they reached it without speaking, they would not
have courage to go down the garden again. She
could not relinquish the strange painful comrade-
ship so soon. They must go on expressing their
relief at being together ; anything she might say
would destroy that. She wanted to take him by the
arm and groan ... on Harriett's wedding-eve, and
when she was feeling so happy and triumphant. . . .

HONEYCOMB 193

" Have you known Gerald long ? " she said, as
they reached the house. He turned sharply to
face the garden again.

" Oh, for a very great number of years," he
said quickly, " a — very — great — number." His
voice was the voice of the ritualistic curate at
All Saints. He sighed impatiently. What was
it he was waiting for her to say ? Nothing per-
haps. This busy walking was a way of finishing
his visit without having to try to talk to anybody.

" How different people are," she said airily.

" I'm very different," he said, with his rasping,
indrawn breath. A darkness coming from him
enfolded her.

" Are you ? " she said insincerely. Her eyes
consulted the flowered border. She saw it as he
saw it, just a flowered border, meaningless.

" You cannot possibly imagine what I am."

Her mind leapt out to the moving garden,
recapturing it scornfully. He is conceited about
his difficulties and differences. He doesn't think
about mine. But he couldn't talk like this unless
he knew I were different. He knows it, but is not
thinking about me.

" Don't you think people are all alike, really? "
she said impatiently.

194 HONEYCOMB

" Our common humanity," he said bitingly.

She had lost a thread. They were divided. She
felt stiffly about for a conventional phrase.

" I expect that most men are the average
manly man with the average manly faults."
She had read that somewhere. It was sly and
wrong, written by somebody who wanted to
flatter.

" It is wonderful, wonderful that you should
say that to me." He stared at the grass with
angry eyes. His mouth smiled. His teeth were
large and even. They seemed to smile by them-
selves. The dark, flexible lips curled about them
in an unwilling grimace.

" He's in some horrible pit," thought Miriam,
shrinking from the sight of the desolate garden.

" What are you going to do in life ? " she said
suddenly.

During the long silent interval she had felt a
growing longing to hurt him in some way.

"If I had my will — if — I had my will — I
should escape from the world."

" What would you do ? "

" I should join a brotherhood."

" Oh. . . ."

" That is the life I should choose."

H O N E Y.C O M B 195

"Do you see how unfair everything is ? "

" Urn ? "

" If a woman joins an order she must confess
to a man."

" Yes," he said indifferently. ..." I can't
carry out my wish, I can't carry out my dearest
wish."

" You have a dearest wish ; that is a good deal."

She ought to ask him why not and what he was
going to do. But what did it matter ? He was
going unwillingly along some dreary path. There
was some weak helplessness about him. He
would always have a grievance and be sorry for
himself . . . self-pity. She remained silent.

" I'm training for the Bar," he murmured,
staring away across the neighbouring gardens.

" Why— in Heaven's name ? "

" I have no choice."

" But it's absurd. You are almost a priest."

" The Bar. That is my bourne."

" Lawyers are the most ignorant, awful
people."

" I cannot claim superiority." He laughed
bitterly.

" But you can ; you are. You can never be a
lawyer."

196 HONEYCOMB

" It is necessary to do one's duty. Occupation
does not matter."

" There you are ; you're a Jesuit already,"
said Miriam angrily, seeing the figure at her side
shrouded in a habit, wrapped in tranquillity,
pacing along a cloister, lost to her. But if he
stayed in the world and became a lawyer he would
be equally lost to her.

" I have been . . . mad" he muttered ; " a
madman ... nothing but the cloister can give
me peace — nothing but the cloister."

" I don't know. It seems like running away."

" Running towards, running towards "

Can't you be at peace now, in this garden ?
ran her thoughts. I don't condemn you for
anything. Why can't we stop worrying at things
and be at peace ? If I were beautiful I could make
you be at peace — perhaps. But it would be a
trick. Only real religion can help you. I can't
do anything. You are religious. I must keep
still and quiet. . . .

If some cleansing fire could come and consume
them both . . . flaring into the garden and
consuming them both, together. Neither of
them were wanted in the world. No one would
ever want either of them. Then why could they

HONEYCOMB 197

not want each other ? He did not wish it.
Salvation. He wanted salvation — for himself.

" My people must be considered first," he said
speculatively.

'' They want you to be a barrister. That's
the last reason in the world that would affect me"

He glanced at her with far-off speculative eyes,
his upper lip drawn terribly back from his teeth.

" He is thinking I am a hard unfeminine ill-
bred woman."

" I do it as an atonement."

The word rang in the garden . . . the low
tone of a bell. Her thoughts leaned towards the
strength at her side.

" Oh, that's grand," she said hastily, and
fluted quickly on, wondering where the inspira-
tion had come from : " Luther said it's much
more difficult to live in the world than in a cell.'*

" I am glad I have met you, glad I have met
you," he said, in a clear light tone.

She felt she knew the quality of the family
voice, the way he had spoken as a lad, before his
troubles came, his own voice easy and sincere.
The flowers shone firm and steady on their
stalks.

She laughed and rushed on into cheerful words,

198 HONEYCOMB

but his harsh voice drowned hers. " You have
put my life in a nutshell."

" How uncomfortable for you," she giggled
excitedly.

He laughed with a dip of the head obsequiously.
There was a catch of mirth in his tone.

Miriam laughed and laughed, laughing out
fully in relief. He turned towards her a young
lit face, protesting and insisting. She wanted to
wash it, with soap, to clear away a faint greasiness
and do something with the lank, despairing hair.

" You have come at the right instant, and shown
me. wisdom. You are wonderful."

She recoiled. She did not really want to help
him. She wanted to attract his attention to her.
She had done it and he did not know it. Horrible.
They were both caught in something. She had
wanted to be caught, together with this agonising
priestliness. But it was a trick. Perhaps they
hated each other now.

" It is jolly to talk about things," she said, as
the blood surged into her face.

He was grave again and did not answer.

" People don't talk about things nearly enough,"
she pursued.

HONEYCOMB 199

10

" I saw Miriam through the window, deep in
conversation with a most interesting young man."

" Have those people written about the bou-
quets ? " said Miriam irritably. . . . Then
mother had moved about the new house and was
looking through those drawing-room windows
this afternoon. She had looked about the house
with someone else, saying all the wrong things,
admiring things in the wrong way, impressed in
the wrong way, having no thoughts, and no one
with her to tell her what to think. . . .

She flashed a passionate glance towards the
clear weak flexible voice, half seeing the flushed
face . . . you're not upset about the weddings —
" Miriam's scandalous goings-on the whole day
long," said somebody . . . because you've got
me. You don't know me. You wouldn't like me
if you did. You don't know him. He doesn't
know you. But I know you, that's the differ-
ence. . . .

" I've just thought something out," she said
aloud, her voice drowned by two or three voices
and the sound of things being served and handed
about the supper-table. They were trying to

200 HONEYCOMB

draw her — still talking about the young men and
her " goings-on." They did not know how far
away she was and how secure she felt. She laughed
towards her mother and smiled at her until she
made her blush. Ah, she thought proudly, it's
I who am your husband. Why have I not been
with you all your life ? ... all the times you
were alone ; I knew them all. No one else knows
them.

" I say," she insisted, " what about the
bouquets ? "

Mrs. Henderson raised her eyebrows helplessly
and smiled, disclaiming.

" Hasn't anybody done anything ? " roared
Miriam.

Mary came in with a dish of fruit. Everyone
went on so placidly. . . . She thought of the
perfect set of her white silk bridesmaid's dress,
its freshness, its clear apple green pipings, the
little green leaves and fresh pink cluster roses on
the white chip hat. If the shower bouquets did
not come it would be simply ghastly. And every-
body went on chattering.

She leaned anxiously across the table to
Harriett.

" Qo— what's up ? " asked Harriett,

HONEYCOMB 201

Conversation had dropped. Miriam sat up to
fling out her grievances.

" Well— just this. I'm told Gerald said the
people would send a line to say it was all right,
and they haven't written, and so far as I can make
out nothing's been done."

" Bouquets would appear to be one of the
essentials of the ceremony," hooted Mr. Hender-
son.

" Well, of course," retorted Miriam savagely,
" if you have a dress wedding at all. That's the
point."

" Quite so, my dear, quite so. I was unaware
that you were depending on a message."

" I'm not anxious. It's simply silly, that's all."

" It'll be all right," suggested Harriett, looking
into space. " They'd have written."

" Well, it's your old bouquet principally."

" Me. With a bouquet. Hoo-

II

" Peace I give unto you, My peace I give unto
you. Not as the world giveth, give I unto
you "

Christ said that. But peace came from God —
the peace of God that passeth all understanding.

202 HONEYCOMB

How could Christ give that ? He put Himself
between God and man. Why could not people
get at God direct ? He was somewhere.

The steam was disappearing out of the window ;
the row of objects ranged along the far side of
the bath grew clear. Miriam looked at them,
seeking escape from the problem — the upright
hand-glass, the brush bag propped against it, the
small bottle of Jockey Club, the little pink box of
French face powder . . . perhaps one day she
would learn to use powder without looking like a
pierrot . . . how nice to have a thick white
skin that never changed and took powder like a
soft bloom. . . .

But as long as the powder box were there it
would be impossible to reach that state of peace
and freedom that Thomas a Kempis meant.
" To Miriam, from her friend, Harriett A.
Perne." Had Miss Haddie found anything of it ?
No — she was horribly afraid of God and turned
to Christ as a sort of protecting lover to be
flattered and to lean upon. . . .

There were so many exquisite and wise things
in the book ; the language was so beautiful. But
somehow there was a whining going all through
it ... fretfulness. Anger too—" I had rather

HONEYCOMB 203

feel compunction than know the definition
thereof." Why not both ? He was talking at
someone in that sentence.

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. But
even Christ went about sad, trying to get people
to do some sort of trick that He said was necessary
before they could find God — something to do
with Himself. There was something wrong about
that.

If one were perfectly still, the sense of God
was there.

Supposing everyone could be got to stay per-
fectly still, until they died . . . like that woman
in the book who was dying so happily of starva-
tion . . . and then the friend came fussing in
with soup. . . .

Things were astounding enough ; enough to
make you die of astonishment, if you did nothing
at all. Being alive. If one could realise that
clearly enough, one would die.

Everything everyone did was just a distraction
from astonishment.

It could only be done in a convent. ... It
cost money to get into a convent, except as a
servant. If you were a servant you could not
stay day and night in your cell — watching the

204 HONEYCOMB

light and darkness until you died. . . . Perhaps
in women's convents they would not let you
anyhow.

Why did men always have more freedom ? . . .
His head had a listening look. His eyes were
waiting desperately, seeing nothing of the things
in the world ... he wanted to stay still until
the voice of things grew so clear and near that
one could give a great cry and fall dead ... a
long long cry. . . . Your hot heart, all of you,
pouring out, getting free. Perhaps that hap-
pened to people when they were happy. They
cried out to each other and were free — lost in
another person. Whoso would save his soul . . .
but then they grew strange and apart. . . .
Marriage was a sort of inferior condition . . .
an imitation of something else. . . . Ho-o-zan-
na-in-the-Hi . . . i . . . est . . . the top note
rang up and stayed right up, in the rafters of the
church.

" Did you ever notice how white the insides of
your wrists are ? "

Why did Bob seem so serious ? . . . What a
bother, what a bother.

It is a good thing to be plain . . . "the
tragedy of beauty ; woman's greatest curse."

HONEYCOMB 205

. . . Andromeda on a rock with her hair blowing
over her face. . . .

She was afraid to look at the monster coming
out of the sea. If she had looked at it, it would
not have dared to come near her. Because
Perseus looked and rescued her, she would have
to be grateful to him all her life and smile and be
Mrs. Perseus. One day they would quarrel and
he would never think her beautiful again. . . .

Adam had not faced the devil. He was stupid
first, and afterwards a coward and a cad . . .
" the divine curiosity of Eve. . . ." Some
person had said that. . . . Perhaps men would
turn round one day and see, what they were like.
Eve had not been unkind to the devil ; only
Adam and God. All the men in the world, and
their God, ought to apologise to women. . . .

To hold back and keep free . . . and real. Im-
possible to be real unless you were quite free. . . .
Two married in one family was enough. Eve
would marry, too.

But money.

The chair-bed creaked as she knelt up and
turned out the gas. " I love you "... just a
quiet manly voice . . . perhaps one would forget
everything, all the horrors and mysteries . . .

206 HONEYCOMB

because there would be somewhere then always
to be, to rest, and feel sure. If only . . . just to
sit hand in hand . . . watching snowflakes . . .
to sit in the lamplight, quite quiet.

Pictures came in the darkness . . . lamplit
rooms, gardens, a presence, understanding.

12

Voices were sounding in the next room. Some-
thing being argued. A voice level and reassuring ;
going up now and again into a hateful amused
falsetto. Miriam refused to listen. She had
never been so near before. Of course they talked
in their room. They had talked all their lives ;
an endless conversation ; he laying down the law
... no end to it ... the movement of his
beard as he spoke, the red lips shining through
the fair moustache . . . splash baths and no
soap ; soap is not a cleansing agent ... he had
a ruddy skin . . . healthy.

A tearful, uncertain voice. . . .

" Don't mother . . . don't, don't ... he
can't understand. . . . Come to me ! Come in
here. . . . Well, well ! . . ." A loud clear tone
moving near the door, " Leave it all to nature,
my dear. . . ."

HONEYCOMB 207

They're talking about Sally and Harriett. . . .
He is amused . . . like when he says " the mar-
riage service begins with ' dearly beloved ' and
ends with ' amazement.' . . ."

She turned about, straining away from the
wall and burying her head in her pillow. Some-
thing seemed to shriek within her, throwing him
off, destroying, flinging him away. Never again
anything but contempt. ...

She lay weak and shivering in the uncomfort-
able little bed. Her heart was thudding in her
throat and in her hands . . . beloved . . . be-
loved ... a voice, singing —

"So ear-ly in the mor-ning,
My beloved — my beloved."

Silence, darkness and silence.

13

Waking in the darkness, she heard the fluttering
of leafage in the garden and lay still and cool
listening and smiling. That went on ...
flutter, flutter, in the breeze. It was enough . . .
and things happened, as well, in the far far off
things called " days."

208 HONEYCOMB

H

A fearful clamour — bright sunlight ; some-
thing sticking sideways through the partly opened
door — a tin trumpet. It disappeared with a
flash as she leapt out of bed. The idea of Harriett
being up first !

Harriett stood on the landing in petticoat and
embroidered camisole, her hair neatly pinned,
her face glowing and fresh.

" Gerrup," she said at once.
' You up. You oughtn't to be. I'm going to
get your breakfast. You mustn't dress your-
self. . . ."

" Rot ! You hurry up, old silly ; breakfast's
nearly ready."

She ran upstairs tootling her trumpet. " Hurry
up," she said, from the top of the stairs, with a
friendly grin.

Miriam shouted convivially and retired into
her crowded sunlit bathroom, turning on both
bath taps so that she might sing aloud. Harriett
had made the day strong . . . silver bright and
clean and clear. Harriett was like a clear blade.
She splashed into the cold water gasping and
singing. Two o'clock — ages yet before the

HONEYCOMB 209

weddings. There was a smell of bacon frying.
They would all have breakfast together. She
could smile at Harriett. They had grown up
together and could admit it, because Harriett
was going away. But not for ages. She flew
through her toilet ; the little garden was blazing.
It was a fine hot day.

Bennett and Gerald had turned strained pale
faces to meet the brides as they came up the aisle.
Now, Bennett's broad white forehead seemed to
give out a radiance. It had been fearful to stand
behind Harriett through the service listening to
the bland hollow voice of the vicar and the four
unfamiliar low voices responding, and taking the
long glove smooth and warm from Harriett's hand,
her rustling heavy-scented bouquet. At the sight
of Bennett's grave radiant face the fear deepened
and changed. Marriage was a reality . . .
fearful, searching reality ; it changed people's
expressions. Hard behind came Gerald and
Harriett ; Gerald's long face still pale, his loosely
knit figure carried along by her tense little frame
as she walked, a little firm straight figure of
satin, her veil thrown back from her little snub

210 HONEYCOMB *

face, her face held firmly ; steady and old with
its solid babyish curves and its brave stricken
eyes : old and stricken ; that was how Sarah had
looked too. No radiance on the faces of Sarah
and Harriett.

The Wedding March was pealing out from the
chancel, a great tide of sound blaring down
through the church and echoing back from the
west window, near the door where they would all
go out, in a moment, out into the world. On
they went ; how swift it all was. . . . Sarah
and Harriett, rescued from poverty and fear . . .
mother's wedding on a May morning long ago
... in the little village church ... to walk
out of church into the open country ; in the
morning ; a bride. There were no brides in
London.

Now to fall in behind Eve and Mr. Tremayne.
Mr. Grove walked clumsily. His arms brushed
against the shower bouquet.

The upturned faces of the pink carnations were
fresh and sweet ; for nothing. To-morrow they
would be dead. Harriett's bouquet, dead too
... a wonderful dead bouquet that meant life.
" Where are you, my friend, my own friend ? "

HONEYCOMB 211

16

A wedding seemed to make everybody happy.
The people moving in Harriett's new rooms
were happy. Old people were new and young.
They laughed. . . . The sad dark man, follow-
ing with his tray of glasses as she went from
guest to guest with Harriett's champagne cup
had laughed again and again. . . .

The voices of the grey-clad bridegrooms rang
about the rooms full of quiet relieved laughter.
The outlines of their well-cut grey clothes were
softly pencilled with a radiance of marriage.
Round about Sarah and Eve was a great radiance.
Light streamed from their satin dresses. But
they were untouched. Silent and untouched and
far away. What should these strange men ever
know of them ; coming and going ?

She found herself standing elbow to elbow
with Harriett. Warm currents came to her from
Harriett's body ; she moved her elbow against
Harriett's to draw her attention. Harriett
turned a scorched cheek and a dilated unseeing
eye. Their hands dropped and met. Miriam

212 HONEYCOMB

felt the quivering of firm, strong fingers and the
warm metal of rings. She grasped the matronly
hand with the whole strength of her own. Har-
riett must remember ... all this wedding was
nothing. . . . She was Harriett . . . not the Mrs.
Ducayne Bob Greville had just been talking to
about Curtain Lectures and the Rascality of the
Genus Homo . . . she must remember all the years
of being together, years of nights side by side . . .
night turning to day for both of them, at the
same moment. She gave her hand a little shake.
Harriett made a little skipping movement and
grinned her own ironic grin. It was all right.
They were quite alone and irreverent ; they
two ; the festive crowd was playing a game for
their amusement. They laughed without a sound
as they had so often done in church. The air
that encircled them was the air of their childhood.

18

Gerald's voice sounded near. It made no break
in their union though Harriett welcomed it,
clearing her throat with a businesslike cough.

" Time you changed, Mrs. La Reine," said
Gerald, in a frightened friendly voice.

" Oh, lor, is it ? " . . . that kindliness was

HONEYCOMB 213

only in Harriett's voice when she had hurt
someone.

. . . The edge of Gerald's voice, kind to every-
one, would always be broken when he spoke to
Harriett. She would always be this young
absurd Harriett to him, always. He would go on
fastening her boots for her tenderly, and go
happily about his hobbies. She would never
hear him call her " my dear." That old-fashioned
mock-polite insolence of men . . . paterfamilias.

The four of them were together in a room
again, fastening and hooking and adjusting ;
standing about before mirrors. We've all
grown up together . . . we can admit it now
. . . we're admitting it. Everything clear, back
to the beginning ; happy and good. The room
was still with the hush of its fresh draperies,
hemming them in. Beautiful immortal forms
moved in the room, reaping . . . voices, steady
and secure, said nothing but the necessary things,
borne down with wealth, all the wealth there was
... all the laughter and certainty. Immor-
tality. Nothing could die. They saw and knew
everything. Each tone was a confession and a

2i4 HONEYCOMB

song of truth. They need never meet and speak
again. They had known. The voices of Sarah
and Harriett would go on ... marked with
fresh things. . . . Her own and Eve's would
remain, separate, to grow broken and false and
unrecognisable in the awful struggle for money.
No matter. The low secure untroubled tone
of a woman's voice. There was nothing like it
on earth. ... If you had once heard it ... in
your own voice, and the voice of another woman
responding . . . everything was there.

20

Was there anyone who fully realised how
amazing it was ... a human tone. Perhaps
everyone did, really, most people without know-
ing it. A few knew. Perhaps that was what kept
life going.

21

In a few minutes they would go. They avoided
each other's eyes. Miriam began to be afraid
Eve would say something cheerful, or sing a
snatch of song, desecrating the singing that was
there, the deep eternal singing in each casual tone.

Gerald's whistle came up from the front
garden.

HONEYCOMB 215

Miriam opened the door. Bennett's voice
came from the hall, calling for Sarah.

" Your skirt sets simply perfectly, Sally." . . .
Sarah was at the door in her neat soft dark blue
travelling dress, and a soft blue straw hat with
striped ribbon bands and bows, hurrying forward?
her gold hair shining under her hat ; seeing
nothing but the open door downstairs and
Bennett waiting.

22

The garden and pathway was thronged with
bright-coloured guests. Miriam found herself
standing with Gerald on the curb, waiting for
Harriett to finish her farewells. He crushed her
arm against his side. " Good Lord, Mirry, ain't
I glad it's all over."

Sarah was stepping into the shelter of the first
of the two waiting carriages. Her face was clear
with relief. Bennett followed, dressed like her
in dark blue. On the step he spoke abruptly,
something about a small portmanteau. Sarah's
voice sounded from inside. Miriam had never
heard her speak with such cool unconcern. Per-
haps she had never known Sarah. Sarah was
herself now, for the first time free and uncon-

216 HONEYCOMB

cerned. What freedom. Cool and unconcerned.
The door shut with a bang. They had forgotten
everyone. They were going to forget to wave.
Everyone had watched them. But they did not
think of that. They saw green Devonshire ahead
and their little house waiting in the Upper Rich-
mond Road with work for them both, work they
could both do well, with all their might when
they came back. Someone shouted. Rice was
being showered. People were running down the
road showering rice. The road and pathway
were bright with happy marriage, all the world
linked in happy marriages.

23

The second carriage swept round the bend of
the road with a yellow silk slipper swinging in the
rear. Miriam struggled for breath through tears.
Gerald and Harriett had taken the old life away
with them in their carriage. Harriett had taken
it, and gone. But she knew. She would bring it
back with her. They would come back. Harriett
would never forget. Nothing could change or
frighten her. She would come back the same, in
her new dresses, laughing.

A fat voice . . . Mrs. Bywater ..." proud

HONEYCOMB 217

of your gails, Mrs. Henderson" ... fat flatter-
ing voice. The brightness had gone from the
houses and the roadway . . . unreal people were
moving about with absurd things on their heads.
Bridesmaids in cold white dresses, moving in
pounces, as people spoke to them . . . the
Hendon girls. . . . What bad complexions Har-
riett's school friends had. Why were they all
dark ? Why did Harriett like them ? Who was
Harriett? Why did she have dark, sallow
friends ? Oh . . . this dark face, near and
familiar . . . saying something — eyes looking at
nothing ; haunted eyes looking at nothing, very
dear and familiar . . . relief . . . the sky seems
to lift again ; kind harmless bitter features,
coming near and speaking.

" I am obliged to go " rasping voice,

curious sawing breath. . . .

" Oh yes. . . ." Perhaps there will be a
thunderstorm or something — something will hap-
pen.

" We shall meet again."

« Yes— oh, yes."

218 HONEYCOMB

24

There was no reason to feel nervous, at any
rate for a night or two. Burglars who wanted
the presents would take some time to find out
that there was only one young lady in the house
and a little servant sleeping in a top room. It
was all right. No need to put the dinner-bell on
the dressing-table. Next week the middle-aged
servant would have arrived. Would she mind
being alone with the presents and the little maid ?
The only way to feel quite secure at night would
be to marry . . . how awful . . . either you
marry and are never alone or you risk being alone
and afraid ... to marry for safety . . . per-
haps some women did. No wonder . . . and
not to turn into a silly scared nervous old maid
. . . how tiresome, one thing or the other . . .
no choice.

She laid her head on the pillow. Thank
Heaven I'm here and not at home . . . out of
it. ... " I'll come round, first thing, to cut up
the cake " — that would be jolly too. But here
. . . with all these new things, magical and easy,
secure with Gerald and Harriett, chosen to em-
bark on their new life with them. ..." You

HONEYCOMB 219

chuck your job, my dear, and stay with us for a
bit." They would like it. That was so jolly.
Absurd free days with Harriett ; tea in the
garden, theatres ; people coming, Mr. Tremayne
and Mr. Grove. . . .

But there was something, some thought sweep-
ing round all these things, something else, sweep-
ing round outside the weddings and the joy of
being at home, making all these things extra, like
things thrown in, jolly and perfect and surprising,
but thrown in with something else that was her
own, something hovering around and above, in
and out the whole day keeping her apart. This
morning the weddings had seemed the end of
everything. They were over, Harriett's and
Sarah's lives going forward and her own share in
them, and home still there too, three things
instead of one, easily hers. And yet they did not
concern her. It would be a sham to pretend they
did, with this other thing haunting — to go on
from thing to thing, living with people and for
them as if there were nothing else, as people
seemed to do, one thing happening after another
all the time. Sham.

Harriett and Sarah had rushed out into life.
They had changed everything. Things did not

220 HONEYCOMB

seem to matter now that they had achieved all
that. Harriett would take the first shock of life
for her. Curiosities could come to an end. It
did not seem to matter. That was all at peace,
through Harriett. Life had come into the family,
leaving her free. . . .

Was she free ? That strange, dark priestliness.
If he called to her, if he really called. . . . But
he called in a dark dreadful way . . . and yet
mysteriously linked to something in her. She
could not give the help he needed. She would
fail. Over their lives would shine, far away,
visible to both of them the radiance of heaven.
They both wanted to be good ; redemption from
sin. They both believed these things. But he
was weak, weak . . . and she not strong enough
to help. And there was that other thing beckon-
ing far from this suburban life and quite as far
from him, away, up in London, down at New-
lands, a brightness. . . .

She looked through the darkness at the harmony
of soft tones and draperies at distant Newlands
. . . etchings ; the strange effect of etchings
. . . there were no etchings in the suburbs . . .
curious, close, strong lines that rested you and
had a meaning and expression even though you

HONEYCOMB 221

did not understand the subject. There were so
many things to take you away from people. In
the suburbs people were everything, and there
was nothing in them. They did not understand
anything ; but going on. They were helpless
and without thoughts ; amongst their furniture.
They did not even have busts of Beethoven. At
Newlands people might be dead, the women in
bright hard deaths or deaths of cold, cruel
deceitfulness, the men tiny insects of selfishness,
but there were things that made up for everything
full and satisfying.

And Salviati's window. . . .

She must hold on to these things. Life with-
out them would be impossible.

It was — Style ... or something. Le style
c'est 1'homme. That meant something. It was
the same with clothes. . . . Suburban people
could be fashionable, never stylish. And manners.
. . . They were fussily kind and nice to each
other ; as if life were pitiful . . . life . . .
pitiful. They all pitied, and despised each other.

25

The night was vast with all the other things.
No need to sleep. To lie happy and strong in

222 HONEYCOMB

the sense of them was better than sleep. In a
few hours the little .suburban day would come
. . . everything gleaming with the light of the
big things beyond. One could go through it in
a drowse of strength, full of laughter . . .
laughter to the brim, all one's limbs strong and
heavy with laughter.

Bob Greville had gone jingling down the road
in a hansom — grey holland blinds and a pink rose-
bud in the driver's buttonhole. Why had he
come ? Going in and out of the weddings a pale
grey white -spatted guest, talking to everyone
... a preoccupied piece of the West End.
Large club windows looking out on sunlit
Piccadilly ; a glimpse of the gaze of the Green
Park. Weddings must be laughable to him with
his " Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures " ideas.
His wife was dead. She had been fearfully ill
suddenly on their wedding tour ... at " Law-
zanne." That was the wrong way to pronounce
Lausanne. And that wrong way of pronouncing
was somehow part of his way of thinking about
her. He seemed to remember nothing but her
getting ill and spoke with a sort of laughing,
contemptuous fear . Men.

But in some way he was connected with

HONEYCOMB 223

that strange thing outside the everyday
things.

26

How stupid of Eve to be vexed because she
was told there was no need to scrawl the addresses
of the little cake boxes right across the labels.
Impossible now to ask her to come and play song
accompaniments. Besides, she was tired. Eve
was tired because she did not really know how
glorious life was. In her life with the Greens in
Wiltshire there was nothing besides the Greens
but the beautiful landscape. And the landscape
seen from the Greens' windows must look com-
mercial, in the end. Eve was evidently beginning
to tire of it. And they had worked so hard all
the morning cutting up the cake. Eve did not
know that towards the end of the morning she
had thought of singing after lunch . . . feeling
so strong and wanting to make a noise. Bohm's
songs. It was better really to sing to one's own
accompaniment ; only there was no one to
listen. . . .

" Und wenn i dann mal wie-ie-d-er komm."

a German girl, her face strahlend mil Freude —
radiant with joy ... but strahlend was more

224 HONEYCOMB

than radiant . . . streaming — like sunlight —
shafts of sunlight. German women were not
self-conscious. They were full of joy and sorrow.
Perhaps happier than any other women. Their
mountains and woods and villages and towns
were beautiful with joy. They did not care what
men thought or said. They were happy in their
beautiful country in their own way. Germany
... all washed with poetry and music and song.
" Freue dich des Lebens." Freue . . . Freue
dich . . . the words were like the rush of wings
. . . the flutter of a fresh skirt round happy

hurrying feet.

27

" What a melancholy ditty, chick."
Miriam laughed and dropped into the accom-
paniment of Schubert's " Ave Maria." " Listen,
mother . . . there was a monk who sang this so
beautifully in a church that he had to be stopped."
She played through the " Ave Maria " and looked
round. Mrs. Henderson was sitting stiffly in a
stiff straight chair with her hands twisted in her
lap. " Oh bother," thought Miriam, " she's
feeling hysterical . . . and it's my turn this
time. What on earth shall I do ? " The word
had come up through the years. Sarah had seen

HONEYCOMB 225

" attacks o£ hysteria. . . ." Was she going to
have one now . . . laugh and cry and say dread-
ful things and then be utterly exhausted ? Good
Lord, how fearful. And what was the good ?
She " couldn't help it." That was why you had
to be firm with hysterical people. But there was
no need, now. Everything was better. Two of
them married ; the boys ready to look after
everything. It was simply irritating . . . and
the sun just coming round into the green of the
conservatory. . . .

She sat impatient, feeling young and strong
and solid with joy on the piano stool. Couldn't
mother see her, sitting there in a sort of blaze of
happy strength ? She swung impatiently round
to the keyboard and glanced at the open album.
There was silence in the room. Her heart beat
anxiously . . . some German printer had printed
those notes ... in pain and illness perhaps—
but pain and illness in Germany, not in this
dreadful little room where despair was shut in.
..." Comus," " The Seven Ages of Man,"
" The Arctic Regions," beautiful bindings on
the little old inlaid table, things belonging to
those sunny beginnings and ending with that
awful agonised figure sitting there silent. She

226 HONEYCOMB

cleared her throat and stretched a hand out over
the notes of a chord without striking it. Some-
thing was gaining on her. Something awful and
horrible.

" Play something cheerful, chickie," said her
mother, in a dreadful deep trembling voice.
Suddenly Miriam knew, in horror, that the
voice wanted to scream, to bellow. Bellow . . .
that huge, tall woman striding about on the
common at Worthing . . . bellowing . . . mad
— madness. She summoned, desperately, some-
thing in herself, and played a thing she disliked,
wondering why she chose it. Her hands played
carefully, holding to the rhythm, carefully
avoiding pressure and emphasis. Nothing could
happen as long as she could keep on playing like
that. It made the music seem like a third person
in the room. It was a new way of playing. She
would try it again when she was alone. It made
the piece wonderful . . . traceries of tone shap-
ing themselves one after another, intertwining,
and stopping against the air ... tendrils on a
sunlit wall. . . . She had a clear conviction of
manhood . . . that strange hard feeling that
was always twining between her and the things
people wanted her to do and to be. Manhood

HONEYCOMB 227

with something behind it that understood. This
time it was welcome. It served. She asserted it,
sadly feeling it mould the lines of her face.

28

The end of the piece was swift and tuneful
and stormy, the only part she had cared for
hitherto. For a moment she was tempted to
dash into it ... her hands were so able and
strong, so near to mastery of the piano after that
curious careful playing. But it would be cruel.
She passed on to the final chords — broad and even
and simple. They suggested quiet music going
on, playing itself in the room. Getting up beam-
ing and shy and embarrassed she did not dare to
look at the waiting figure, and looked busily into
the dark interiors of the bowls and vases along the
mantelpiece. . . . There was something in the
waiting figure that did not want to scream.
Something exactly like herself. ... At the
bottom of one of the deep bowls was a curling-
pin. She giggled, catching her breath.

Mrs. Henderson glanced up at her and looked
away, looking about the room. That's naughty,
thought Miriam. She's not trying ; she's being
naughty and tiresome. Perhaps she's angry with

228 HONEYCOMB

me, and thinks I mean she must just go on endur-
ing.

" I can't correct a misprint with a curling-pin."

Mother believed in the misprint. . . . Talk
on about misprints . . . why was it necessary to
be insincere if one wanted to make anything
happen ? But anything was better than saying,
What is the matter ? That would be just as in-
sincere, and impudent too.

" These cheap things are always so badly
printed."

"Oh ! "... Mother's polite tone, trying to
be interested. That was all she'd had for years.
All she'd ever had, from him. Miriam sat down
conversationally, in a long chair. She felt a numb
sleepiness coming over her, and stretched all her
muscles lazily, to their full limit . . . mother,
just mother in the room, perfect ease and security
. . . and relaxed with a long yawn, feeling
serenely awake. The little figure ceased to be
horrible.

" My life has been so useless," said Mrs.
Henderson suddenly.

Here it was ... a jolt ... an awful physi-
cal shock, jarring her body. . . . She braced
herself and spoke quickly and blindly ... a

HONEYCOMB 229

network of feeling vibrated all over to and fro,
painfully.

" It only seems so to you," she said, in a voice
muffled by the beating of her heart. Anything
might happen — she had no power. . . . Mother
— almost killed by things she could not control,
having done her duty all her life . . . doing
thing after thing had not satisfied her . . .
being happy and brave had not satisfied her.
There was something she had always wanted,
for herself . . . even mother. . . .

Mrs. Henderson shuddered and sighed. Her
pose relaxed a little.

" I might have done something for the poor."

" Oh, yes ? What things ? " She had lived
in a nightmare of ways and means, helpless. ...

" I might have made clothes, sometimes. . . ."

" That worries you, so that you can hardly
bear it."

" Yes."

" It needn't. I don't mean the poor need not
be helped. But you needn't have that feeling."

" You understand it ? "

" I feel it this moment, as you feel it."

" Well ? "

" You needn't."

230 HONEYCOMB

Miriam held back her thoughts. Nothing
mattered but to sit there holding back thought
and feeling and argument, if only she could
without getting angry. . . . There was something
here, something decisive. This was what she
had been born for, if only she could hold on.
She felt very old. No more happiness . . . the
little house they sat in was a mockery, a fiendish
contrivance to hide agony. There was nothing
in these little houses in themselves, just indiffer-
ence hiding miseries.

She sat forward conversationally. A rain of
tears was coming down her companion's cheeks.
To hold on ... hold on ... not to think or
feel glad or sorry ... it would be impudent to
feel anything ... to hold on if the tears went
on for an hour . . . treating them as if they were
part of a conversation.

" You understand me ? "

" Of course."

" You are the only one." -

The relieved voice . . . steady, as she had
known it correcting her in her babyhood.

" I should be better if I could be more with
you . . ." oh Lord . . . impossible.

" You must be with me as much as you like."

HONEYCOMB 231

That was the thing. That was what must be
done somehow.

" Mother ! would you mind if I smoked a
cigarette ? "

It was suddenly possible, the unheard-of un-
confessed . . . suddenly easy and possible.

" My dearest child ! " Mrs. Henderson's
flushed face crimsoned unresistingly. She was
shocked and ashamed and half delighted. Miriam
gazed boldly, admiring and adoring. She felt
she had embarked on her first real flirtation and
blessed the impulse that had that morning
transferred cigarettes and matches from her
handbag to her hanging pocket as a protection
against suburban influence and a foretaste of her
appointment with Bob. She lit a cigarette with
downcast lids and a wicked smile, throwing a
triumphant possessive glance at her mother as it
drew. The cigarette was divine. It was divine
to smoke like this, countenanced and beloved —
scandalous and beloved.

29

Miriam ran all the way to the station. The
gardens on either side of Gipsy Lane were full of
flowering shrubs massed up against laburnum and

232 HONEYCOMB

may trees in flower . . . fresh clean colours,
pink and lilac and yellow and everywhere new
bright fresh green . . . May. She flung herself
into an empty carriage of the three o'clock
Vauxhall and Waterloo train, her eyes filled with
the maze of garden freshness and was carried off
along the edge of the common, streaming blazing
green in the full sunlight, dotted with gorse.
Bob would not have to wait at Waterloo. . . .
Further down the line, towards Kew, was the
mile of orchards, close on either side . of the line,
thick with bloom. . . . Walls and houses began
to appear. She took her eyes from the window
and the gardens and the common and the
imagined orchards passed before her eyes in the
dusty enclosure. As she gazed they seemed to
pass through her, the freshness of the blossoms
backed by fresh greenery was a feeling, cool and
fresh in her blood. The growing intensity of
this feeling stirred her to movement and con-
sciousness of the dust-filmed carriage, the smell
of dust. Still again, the sight of the spring
flowing from her eyes, into them, out through
them, breathing with her breath, the feeling of
spring in the soft beating from head to foot of
her blood, was all there was anywhere out to

HONEYCOMB 233

the limits of space. The dusty carriage was a
speck in the great fresh tide, and the vision of
Eve drifting in the carriage, in the corner,
opposite, with pale frightened face, saying the
things she had said just now, was no longer
terrifying, though each thing she said came
clearly, a separate digging blow.

..." Dr. Ryman is giving her bromide . . .
she can't sleep without it." Sleeplessness, in-
somnia . . . she can't see the spring . . . why
not ; and forget about herself.

" It's nerves. He says we must behave as if
there was nothing wrong with her. There is
nothing wrong but nerves."

That fevered frame, the burning hands and
burning eyes looking at everything in the wrong
way, the brain seeking abcmt, thinking first this
and then that . . . nerves ; and fat Dr. Ryman
giving bromide . . . awful little bottles of bro-
mide coming to the house wrapped up in white
paper. And everyone satisfied. " She's in Dr.
Ryman's hands. Dr. Ryman is treating her."
Mrs. Poole said Dr. Ryman was a very able man.
What did she mean ? How did she know ?
Suburban faces ; satisfied. " In the doctor's
hands." A large square house, a square garden,

234 HONEYCOMB

high walls, a delicate wife always being ill, always
going to that place in Germany — how did he
know, going about in a brougham — and he had
gout . . . how did he know more than anyone
else? . . . bottles of bromide, visits, bills, and
mother going patiently on, trusting and feeling
unhelped. Going on. People went . . . mad.
If she could not sleep she would go . . . mad.
. . . And everyone behaving as if nothing were
wrong.

And the vicar ! Praying in the dining-room.
Sarah had heard. . . . The vicar, kneeling on
the Turkey carpet . . . praying. Couldn't God
see her, on the carpet, praying and trying ? And
the vicar went away. And things were the same
and that night she would not sleep, just the same.
Of course not. Nothing was changed. It was
all going on for her in some hot wrong, shut-up
way. Bromide and prayers.

30

And she blamed herself. If only she would not
blame herself. " He's one in a thousand ... if
only I could be as calm and cool as he is." Why
not be calm and cool ? She had gone too far ...
" the end of my tether "... mother, a clever

HONEYCOMB 235

phrase like that, where had she got it ? It was
true. Her suffering had taught her to find that
awful phrase. She feared her room, " loathed "
it. She, always gently scolding exaggeration,
used and meant that violent word

Money. That was why nothing had been done.
c The doctor " had to be afforded as she was so
ill, but nothing had been done. Borrow from
the boys to take her away. " A bright place and
a cool breeze." She dreamed of things — far-
away impossible things. Had she told the others
she wanted them ? They must be told. To-
morrow she should know she was going away.
Nothing else in life mattered. Someone must
pay, anyone. Newlands must go. To-morrow
and every day till they went away she should
come round to Harriett's new house. Something
for her to do every day.

The little bonneted figure . . . happy,
shocked, smiling. To go about with her, telling
her everything, dreadful things. The two of
them going about and talking and not talking,
and going about.

236 HONEYCOMB

32

Miriam moved uneasily to the mantelpiece.
An unlit fire was laid neatly in the grate. A ray
of sunlight struck the black bars of the grate ;
false uneasy sunlight. Two strange round-
bowled long-necked vases stood on the mantel-
piece amongst the litter of Bob's belongings.
Dull blue and green enamellings moving on a
dark almost black background . . . strange fine
little threads of gold. . . . She peered at them.

" My dear girl, do you like my vases ? " Bob
came and stood at her side.

" Yes — they're funny and queer. I like them."

6 They're clawzonny — Japanese clawzonny."
He took one of them up and tapped it with his
nail. It gave out a curious dull metallic ring.
Miriam passed her finger over the enamelled
surface. It was softly smooth and with no chill
about it ; as if the enamel were alive. She mar-
velled at the workmanship, wondering how the
gold wires were introduced. They gleamed,
veining over the curves of the vase.

Her uneasiness had gone. While they were
looking at the vases it did not seem to matter
that she had consented, defying the whole world,

HONEYCOMB 237

to come and see Bob's bachelor chambers. She
did not like them and wanted to be gone. The
curious dingy dustiness oppressed her, and there
was an emptiness. Fancy having breakfast in a
room like this. Who looked after a man's wash-
ing when he lived alone ? There must be some
dreadful sort of charwoman who came, and Bob
had to speak kindly to her in his weary old voice
and go .on day after day being here. But the
vases stood there alive and beautiful and he liked
them. She turned to see his liking in his face.
As she turned his arm came round her shoulders
and the angle of his shoulder softly touched her
head. Behind her head there was a point of
perfect rest ; comfort, perfect. Australia ; a
young man in shirt-sleeves, toiling and dreaming.
Was that there still in his face ?

" Are you happy, dear girl ? Do you like being
with old Bob in his den ? "

He came nearer and spoke with a soft husky
whisper.

" Let me go," said Miriam wearily, longing to
rest, longing for the stairs they had come up and
the open street in the sunshine and freedom.

She moved away and gathered up her gloves
and scarf.

CHAPTER XI
i

MIRIAM sat with her mother near the
bandstand. They faced the length of
the esplanade with the row of houses that held
their lodging to their right and the sea away to
the left. She had found that it was better to
sit facing a moving vista ; forms passing by too
near to be looked at and people moving in the
distance too far away to suggest anything. The
bandstand had filled. The town-clock struck
eleven. Presently the band would begin to play.
Any minute now. It had begun. The intro-
duction to its dreamiest waltz was murmuring
in a conversational undertone. The stare of the
esplanade rippled and broke. The idling visitors
became vivid blottings. The house-rows stood
out in lines and angles. The short solemn
symphony was over. Full and soft and ripe the
euphonium began the beat of the waltz. It beat
gently within the wooden kiosk. The fluted
melody went out across the sea. The sparkling

238

HONEYCOMB 239

ripples rocked gently against the melody. A
rousing theme would have been more welcome
to the suffering at her side. She waited for the
loud gay jerky tripping of the second movement.
When it crashed brassily out the scene grew vivid.
The air seemed to move ; freshness of air and
sea coming from the busy noise of the kiosk. The
restless fingers ceased straying and plucking. The
suffering had shifted. The night was over.
When the waltz was over they would be able to
talk a little. There would be something . . .
a goat-chaise ; a pug with a solemn injured face.
Until the waltz came to an end she turned
towards the sea, wandering out over the gleaming
ripples, hearing their soft sound, snuffing fresh-
ness, seeing the water just below her eyes,. trans-
parent green and blue and mauve, salt-filmed.

2

The big old woman's voice grated on about
Poole's Miriorama. She had been a seven-mile
walk before lunch and meant to go to Poole's
Miriorama. She knew everything there was in it
and went to it every summer and for long walks
and washed lace in her room and borrowed an
iron from Miss Meldrum. No one listened and

240 HONEYCOMB

her deep voice drowned all the sounds at the
table. She only stopped at the beginning of a
mouthful or to clear her throat with a long harsh
grating sound. She did not know that there was
nothing wonderful about Poole's Miriorama or
about walking every morning to the end of the
parade and back. She did not know that there
were wonderful things. She was like her father
. . . she was mad. Miss Meldrum listened and
answered without attending. The other people
sat politely round the table and passed things
with a great deal of stiff politeness. One or two
of them talked suddenly, with raised voices. The
others exclaimed. They were all in agreement . . .
" a young woman with a baritone voice "...
a frog, white, keeping alive in coal for hundreds
of years . . . my cousin has crossed the Atlantic
six times. . . . Nothing of any kind would ever
stop them. They would never wait to know
they were alive. They were mad. They would
die mad. Of diseases with names. Even Miss
Meldrum did not quite know. When she talked
she was as mad as they were. When she was alone
in her room and not thinking about ways and
means she read books of devotion and cried. If
she had had a home and a family she would have

HONEYCOMB 241

urged her sons and daughters to get on and beat
other people. . . . But she knew mother was
different. All of them knew it in some way.
They spoke to her now and again with deference,
their faces flickering with beauty. They knew
she was beautiful. Sunny and sweet and good,
sitting there in her faded dress, her face shining
with exhaustion.

3

They walked down the length of the pier
through the stiff breeze arm in arm. The
pavilion was gaslit, ready for the entertainment.

" Would you rather stay outside this after-
noon ? "

" No. Perhaps the entertainment may cheer

me."

There was a pink paper with their tickets —
" The South Coast Entertainment Company "
. . . that was better than the usual concert.
The inside of the pavilion was like the lunch
table . . . the same people. But there was a
yellow curtain across the platform. Mother
could look at that. It was quite near them. It
would take off the effect of the audience of
people she envied. The cool sound of the waves
flumping and washing against the pier came in

242 HONEYCOMB

through the open doors with a hollow echo. They
were settled and safe for the afternoon. For two
hours there would be nothing but the things
behind the curtain. Then there would be tea.
Mother had felt the yellow curtain. She was
holding the pink programme at a distance trying
to read it. Miriam glanced. The sight of the
cheap black printing on the thin pink paper
threatened the spell of the yellow curtain. She
must manage to avoid reading it. She crossed
her knees and stared at the curtain, yawning and
scolding with an affected manliness about the
forgotten spectacles. They squabbled and
laughed. The flump-wash of the waves had a
cheerful sunlit sound. Mrs. Henderson made a
brisk little movement of settling herself to attend.
The doors were being closed. The sound of the
waves was muffled. They were beating and wash-
ing outside in the sunlight. The gaslit .interior
was a pier pavilion. It was like the inside of a
bathing-machine, gloomy, cool, sodden with sea-
damp, a happy caravan. Outside was the blaze of
the open day, pale and blinding. When they went
out into it it would be a bright unlimited jewel,
getting brighter and brighter, all its colours
fresher and deeper until it turned to clear deep

HONEYCOMB 243

live opal and softened down and down to dark-
ness dotted with little pinlike jewellings of light
along the esplanade ; the dark luminous waves
washing against the black beach until dawn. . . .
The curtain was drawing away from a spring
scene . . . the fresh green of trees feathered up
into a blue sky. There were boughs of apple-
blossom. Bright green grass sprouted along the
edge of a pathway. A woman floundered in from
the side in a pink silk evening dress. She stood in
the centre of the scene preparing to sing, rearing
her gold-wigged head and smiling at the audience.
Perhaps the players were not ready. It was a solo.
She would get through it and then the play would
begin. She smiled promisingly. She had bright
large teeth and the kind of mouth that would say
chahld for child. The orchestra played a few bars.
She took a deep breath. " Bring back — the yahs
— that are — DEAD ! " — she screamed violently.

She was followed by two men in shabby tennis
flannels wich little hard glazed tarpaulin hats
who asked each other riddles. Their jerky broken
voices' fell into cold space and echoed about the
shabby pavilion. The scattered audience sat silent
and still, listening for the voices . . . cabmen
wrangling in a gutter. The green scene stared

244 HONEYCOMB

stiffly — harsh cardboard, thin harsh paint. The
imagined scene moving and flowing in front of it
was going on somewhere out in the world. The
muffled waves sounded near and clear. The
sunlight was dancing on them. When the men
had scrambled away and the applause ha4 died
down, the sound of the waves brought dancing
gliding figures across the stage, waving balancing
arms and unconscious feet gliding and dreaming.
A man was standing in the middle of the plat-
form with a roll of music — bald-headed and
grave and important. The orchestra played the
overture to "The Harbour Bar." But whilst
he unrolled his music ancl cleared his throat his
angry voice filled the pavilion : " it's all your own
fault . . . you get talking and gossiping and
filling yer head with a lot of nonsense . , . now
you needn't begin it all over again twisting and
turning everything I say." And no sound in the
room but the sound of eating. His singing was
pompous anger, appetite. Shame shone from his
rim of hair. He was ashamed, but did not know
that he showed it.

4

They could always walk home along the smooth
grey warm esplanade to tea in an easy silence.

HONEYCOMB 245

The light blossoming from the horizon behind
them was enough. Everything ahead dreamed
in it, at peace. Visitors were streaming home-
wards along the parade lit like flowers. Along
the edge of the tide the town children were
paddling and shouting. After tea they would
come out into the sheltering twilight at peace,
and stroll up and down until it was time to go to
the flying performance of The Pawnbroker's
Daughter.

5

They were late for tea and had it by them-
selves at a table in the window of the little
smoking-room looking out on the garden. Miss
Meldrum called cheerily down through the
house to tell them when they came in. They
went into the little unknown room and the cook
brought up a small silver tea-pot and a bright
cosy. Outside was the stretch of lawn where the
group had been taken in the morning a year ago.
It had been a sea-side town lawn, shabby and
brown, with the town behind it ; unnoticed
because the fresh open sea and sky were waiting
on the other side of the house . . . seaside town
gardens were not gardens . . . the small squares
of greenery were helpless against the bright sea

246 HONEYCOMB

. . . and even against shabby rooms, when the sun
came into the rooms off the sea . . . sea-rooms.
. . . The little smoking-room was screened by
the shade of a tree against whose solid trunk half
of the French window was thrown back.

When the cook shut the door of the little room
the house disappeared. The front rooms bathed
in bright light and hot with the afternoon heat,
the wide afterglow along the front, the vast open
lid of the sky, were in another world. . . .
Miriam pushed back the other half of the
window and they sat down in a green twilight on
the edge of the garden. If others had been there
Mrs. Henderson would have remarked on the
pleasantness of the situation and tried to respond
to it and been dreadfully downcast at her failure
and brave. Miriam held her breath as they
settled themselves. No remark came. The
secret was safe. When she lifted the cosy the
little tea-pot shone silver-white in the strange
light. A thick grey screen of sky must be there,
above the trees, for the garden was an intensity of
deep brilliance, deep bright green and calceo-
larias and geraniums and lobelias, shining in a
brilliant gloom. It was not a seaside garden . . .
it was a garden ... all gardens. They took

HONEYCOMB 247

their meal quietly and slowly, speaking in low
tones. The silent motionless brilliance was a
guest at their feast. The meal-time, so terrible
in the hopelessness of home, such an effort in the
mocking glare of the boarding-house was a great
adventure. Mrs. Henderson ate almost half as
much as Miriam, serenely. Miriam felt that a
new world might be opening.

6

" The storm has cleared the air wonderfully."

" Yes ; isn't it a blessing."

" Perhaps I shan't want the beef-tea to-
night." Miriam hung up her dress in the
cupboard, listening to the serene tone. The
dreadful candle was flickering in the night-
filled room, but mother was quietly making a
supreme effort.

" I don't expect you will " ; she said casually
from the cupboard, " it's ready if you should
want it. But you won't want it."

" It is jolly and fresh," she said a moment later
from the window, holding back the blind.
Perhaps in a few days it would be the real jolly
seaside and she would be young again, staying
there alone with mother, just ridiculous and

248 HONEYCOMB

absurd and frantically happy, mother getting
better and better, turning into the fat happy
little thing she ought to be, and they would get
to know people and mother would have to look
after her and love her high spirits and admire and
scold her and be shocked as she used to be. They
might even bathe. It would be heavenly to be
really at the seaside with just mother. They
would be idiotic.

Mrs. Henderson lay very still as Miriam painted
the acid above the unseen nerve centres and
composed herself afterwards quietly without
speaking. The air was fresh in the room. The
fumes of the acid did not seem so dreadful
to-night.

The Pawnbroker's daughter was with them in
the room, cheering them. The gay young man
had found out somehow through her that " good-
ness and truth " were the heart of his life. She
had not told him. It was he who had found it
out. He had found the words and she did not
want him to say them. But it was a new life for
them both, a new life for him and happiness for
her even if he did not come back, if she could
forget the words.

Putting out the candle at her bedside suddenly

HONEYCOMB 249

and quietly with the match-box to avoid the
dreadful puff that would tell her mother of night,
Miriam lay down. The extinguished light
splintered in the darkness before her eyes. The
room seemed suddenly hot. Her limbs ached,
her nerves blazed with fatigue. She had never
felt this kind of tiredness before. She lay still in
the darkness with open eyes. Mrs. Henderson
was breathing quietly as if in a heavy sleep. She
was not asleep but she was trying to sleep.
Miriam lay watching the pawnbroker's daughter
in the little room at the back of the shop, in the
shop, back again in the little room, coming and
going. There was a shining on her face and on
her hair. Miriam watched until she fell asleep.

7

She dreamed she was in the small music-room in
the old Putney school, hovering invisible. Lilla
was practising alone at the piano. Sounds of the
girls playing rounders came up from the garden.
Lilla was sitting in her brown merino dress, her
black curls shut down like a little cowl over her
head and neck. Her bent profile was stern and
manly, her eyes and her bare white forehead
manly and unconscious. Her lissome brown

HONEYCOMB

hands played steadily and vigorously. Miriam
listened incredulous at the certainty with which
she played out her sadness and her belief. It
shocked her that Lilla should know so deeply and
express her lonely knowledge so ardently. Her
gold-flecked brown eyes that commonly laughed
at everything, except the problem of free-will,
and refused questions, had as much sorrow and
certainty as she had herself. She and Lilla were
one person, the same person. Deep down in
everyone was sorrow and certainty. A faint
resentment filled her. She turned away to go
down into the garden. The scene slid into the
large music-room. It was full of seated forms.
Lilla was at the piano, her foot on the low pedal,
her hands raised for a crashing chord. They
came down, collapsing faintly on a blur of wrong
notes. Miriam rejoiced in her heart. What a
fiend I am . . . what a fiend, she murmured,
her heart hammering condemnation. Someone
was sighing harshly ; to be heard ; in the dark-
ness ; not far off ; fully conscious she glanced at
the blind. It was dark. The moon was not
round. It was about midnight. Her face and
eyes felt thick with sleep. The air was rich with
sleep. Her body was heavy with a richness of

HONEYCOMB 251

sleep and fatigue. In a moment she could be
gone again. ... " Shall I get the beef-tea,
mother ? " . . . she heard herself say in a thin
wideawake voice. "Oh no my dear," sounded
another voice patiently. Rearing her numb
consciousness against a delicious tide of on-
coming sleep she threw off the bed-clothes and
stumbled to the floor. " You can't go on like
this night after night, my dear." " Yes I can,"
said Miriam in a tremulous faint tone. The
sleepless even voice reverberated again in the
unbroken sleeplessness of the room. " It's no use
... I am cumbering the ground." The words
struck sending a heat of anger and resentment
through Miriam's shivering form. She spoke
sharply, groping for the matches.

8

Hurrying across the cold stone floor of the
kitchen she lit the gas from her candle. Beetles
ran away into corners, crackling sickeningly
under the fender. A mouse darted along the
dresser. She braced herself to the sight
of the familiar saucepan, Miss Meldrum's
good beef-tea brown against the white enamel —
helpless . . . waiting for the beef-tea to get hot

252 HONEYCOMB

she ate a biscuit. There was help somewhere.
All those people sleeping quietly upstairs. If she
asked them to they would be surprised and kind.
They would suggest rousing her and getting her
to make efforts. They would speak in rallying
voices, like Dr. Ryman and Mrs. Skrine. For a
day or two it would be better and then much
worse and she would have to go away. Where ?
It would be the same everywhere. There was no
one in the world who could help. There was
something ... if she could leave off worrying.
But that had been Pater's advice all his life and it
had not helped. It was something more than
leaving off ... it was something real. It was
not affection and sympathy. Eve gave them ; so
easily, but they were not big enough. They did
not come near enough. There was something
crafty and worldly about them. They made a
sort of prison. There was something true and real
somewhere. Mother knew it. She had learned
how useless even the good kind people were and
was alone, battling to get at something. If only
she could get at it and rest in it. It was there,
everywhere. It was here in the kitchen, in the
steam rising from the hot beef-tea. A moon-ray
came through the barred window as she turned

HONEYCOMB 253

down the gas. It was clear in the eye of the
moon-ray ; a real thing.

Some instinct led away from the New Testa-
ment. It seemed impossible to-night. Without
consulting her listener Miriam read a psalm.
Mrs. Henderson put down her cup and asked her
to read it again. She read and fluttered pages
quietly to tell the listener that in a moment there
would be some more. Mrs. Henderson waited
saying nothing. She always sighed regretfully
over the gospels and Saint Paul, though she
asked for them and seemed to think she ought to
read them. They were so dreadful ; the gospels
full of social incidents and reproachfulness. They
seemed to reproach everyone and to hint at a
secret that no one possessed . . . the epistles
did nothing but nag and threaten and probe.
St. Paul rhapsodised sometimes. . . . but in a
superior way . . . patronising ; as if no one but
himself knew anything. . . .

" How beautiful upon the mountains are the
feet of those who bring " she read evenly and
slowly. Mrs. Henderson sighed quietly. . . .
" That's Isaiah mother. . . . Isaiah is a beautiful
name." . . . She read on. Something had
shifted. There was something in the room. . , ,

254 HONEYCOMB

If she could go droning on and on in an even tone
it would be there more and more. She read on
till the words flowed together and her droning
voice was thick with sleep. The town clock
struck two. A quiet voice from the other bed
brought the reading to an end. Sleep was in the
room now. She felt sure of it. She lay down
leaving the candle alight and holding her eyes
open. As long as the candle was alight the
substance of her reading remained. When it was
out there would be the challenge of silence again
in the darkness . . . perhaps not ; perhaps it
would still be there when the little hot point of
light had gone. There was a soft sound some-
where . . . the sea. The tide was up, washing
softly. That would do. The sound of it would
be clearer when the light was out . . . drowsy,
lazy, just moving, washing the edge of the beach
. . . cool, fresh. Leaning over she dabbed the
candle noiselessly and sank back asleep before her
head reached the pillow.

t
9

In the room yellow with daylight a voice was
muttering rapidly, rapid words and chuckling
laughter and stillness. Miriam grasped the

HONEYCOMB 255

bedclothes and lay rigid. Something in her fled
out and away, refusing. But from end to end of
the world there was no help against this. It was
a truth ; triumphing over everything. " /
know," said a high clear voice. " / know . . .
I don't deceive myself "... rapid low mutter-
ing and laughter. ... It was a conversation.
Somewhere within it was the answer. Nowhere
else in the world. Forcing herself to be still
she accepted the sounds, pitting herself against
the sense of destruction. The sound of violent
lurching brought her panic. There was some-
thing there that would strike. Hardly knowing
what she did she pretended to wake with a long
loud yawn. Her body shivered, bathed in
perspiration. " What a lovely morning " she
said dreamily, " what a perfect morning." Not
daring to sit up she reached for her watch. Five
o'clock. Three more hours before the day began.
The other bed was still. " It's going to be a
magnificent day " she murmured pretending
to stretch and yawn again. A sigh reached her.
The stillness went on and she lay for an hour
tense and listening. Something must be done
to-day. Someone else must know. ... At the
end of an hour a descending darkness took her

256 HONEYCOMB

suddenly. She woke from it to the sound of
violent language, furniture being roughly moved,
a swift angry splashing of water . . . something
breaking out, breaking through the confinements
of this little furniture-filled room . . . the best
gentlest thing she knew in the world openly

despairing at last.

10

The old homceopathist at the other end of the
town talked quietly on ... the afternoon light
shone on his long white hair . . . the principle
of health, God-given health, governing life. To
be well one must trust in it absolutely. One must
practise trusting in God every day. . . . The
patient grew calm, quietly listening and accepting
everything he said, agreeing again and again.
Miriam sat wondering impatiently why they
could not stay. Here in this quiet place with this
quiet old man, the only place in the world where
anyone had seemed partly to understand, mother
might get better. He could help. He knew what
the world was like and that nobody understood.
He must know that he ought to keep her. But
he did not seem to want to do anything but advise
them and send them away. She hated him, his
serene white-haired pink-faced old age. He

HONEYCOMB 257

told them he was seventy-nine and had never
taken a dose in his life. Leaving his patient to
sip a glass of water into which he had measured
drops of tincture he took Miriam to look at the
greenhouse behind his consulting room. As
soon as they were alone he told her speaking
quickly and without benevolence and in the voice
of a younger man that she must summon help,
a trained attendant. There ought to be some-
one for night and day. He seemed to know
exactly the way in which she had been taxed and
spoke of her youth. It is very wrong for you to
be alone with her he added gravely.

Vaguely, burning with shame at the confession
she explained that it could not be afforded. He
listened attentively and repeated that it was
absolutely necessary. She felt angrily for words
to explain the uselessness of attendants. She
was sure he must know this and wanted to
demand that he should help, then and there at
once, with his quiet house and his knowledge.
Her eye covered him. He was only a pious old
man with artificial teeth making him speak with
a sort of sibilant woolliness. Perhaps he too
knew that in the end even this would fail. He
made her promise to write for help and refused

258 HONEYCOMB

a fee. She hesitated helplessly, feeling the
burden settle. He indicated that .he had said
his say and they went back.

On the way home they talked of the old man.
" He is right ; but it is too late " said Mrs.
Henderson with clear quiet bitterness, " God
has deserted me." They walked on, tiny figures
in a world of huge grey-stone houses. " He will
not let me sleep. He does not want me to sleep.
. . . He does not care."

A thought touched Miriam, touched and
flashed. She grasped at it to hold and speak it,
but it passed off into the world of grey houses.
Her cheeks felt hollow, her feet heavy. She
summoned her strength, but her body seemed
outside her, empty, pacing forward in a world full
of perfect unanswering silence.

ii

The bony old woman held Miriam clasped
closely in her arms. " You must never, as long
as you live, blame yourself my gurl." She went
away. Miriam had not heard her come in. The
pressure of her arms and her huge body came
from far away. Miriam clasped her hands
together. She could not feel them. Perhaps

HONEYCOMB 259

she had dreamed that the old woman had come
in and said that. Everything was dream ; the
world. I shall not have any life. I can never
have any life ; all my days. There were cold
tears running into her mouth. They had no
salt. Cold water. They stopped. Moving her
body with slow difficulty against the unsupport-
ing air she looked slowly about. It was so
difficult to move. Everything was airy and
transparent. Her heavy hot light impalpable
body was the only solid thing in the world,
weighing tons ; and like a lifeless feather. There
was a tray of plates of fish and fruit on the table.
She looked at it, heaving with sickness and look-
ing at it. I am hungry. Sitting down near it
she tried to pull the tray. It would not move.
I must eat the food. Go on eating food, till the
end of my life. Plates of food like these plates of
food. ... I am in eternity . . . where their
worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched.

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